Calculating the Irrigation Water Price of Wheat by Crop Production Function

The water resources deficiency in Iran and sequential droughts events are challenging water resources security in order to cultivate strategic crops such as wheat. In the other hands, huge amount of wheat import to the country necessitates to heed more attention to wheat virtual water and its costs. The objectives of this study were to determine the amount of green and blue virtual water of wheat, irrigation water price and virtual water flow in Iran for ten consecutive years. Consequently, the cultivated area, crop production and precipitation data were collected from ministry of Agriculture and Iran’s Meteorological Organization for the period of 2000 to 2010. The potential evapotranspiration of wheat was extracted for each and every province using AGWAT software package. After calculating the actual evapotranspiration with FAO crop water production function, the effective rainfall as well as the irrigation water price was determined. The results indicated that in suggested water pricing method, the irrigation water price is directly affected by crop price, crop yield and irrigation water amount. The results declared that factors such as climate, financing, economy, scientific and practical new technologies affect irrigation water price deviously. Additionally, this method encourages farmers to use water saving irrigation and farming methods.

کلیدواژه ها:

wheat net irrigation requirement ، FAO crop production function ، AGWAT