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Small and Mid-Sized Farmer Irrigation Adoption in the Context of Public Provision of Hydric Infrastructure in Latin America and Caribbean

Abstract:

According to 2013 statistics from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (EC-LAC 2013), a mere 3.03% of the total agricultural area in the region uses some type of irrigation technology. Thus, there is a high degree of sub-utilization of existing hydric infrastructure given that the supply of irrigation capacity in many countries is greater than the calculated use (see Herrera et al. 2005; IICA 2011; CONAGUA 2014, among others). Nonetheless, there are a limited number of studies that characterize the factors affecting the adoption of irrigation by small and mid-sized farmers in the influence area of irrigation projects. This manuscript presents a novel empirical decision model applicable to irrigation adoption based on exogenous and endogenous factors in the context of LAC countries, which is solved through a binary equation system with latent variables. The main goals are to capture the effect that certain idiosyncratic variables, such as lack of cbkp_redit access, can have over the decision of irrigation adoption; as well as the costs associated to private goods, financed through cbkp_redit, which are necessary to access to the benefits of the provision of irrigation as a public good.