IRRIGATION PROJECT PLANNING VIA MARGINAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The object of the Thesis is to present the planning of irrigation project with storage as a problem of demand and supply. The marginal analysis presented is based on maximizing net benefits due to irrigation. The benefit of irrigation is computed through willingness to pay by the user for the irrigation water. The willingness to pay is imputed as the benefit the farmer gets net of his expenses such as fixed cost and variable costs such as cost of trans-portation and cost of inp uts like water and fertilizer. On the supply side, the amount of water demanded at different months are computed as proportional to the ratio of monthly evapotranspiration requirement to seasonal potential evapotranspiration computed through pan evapora-tion. The storage requirements are calculated through sequent peak algorithm for specified demands and are used in computing the supply curve through engineering cost estimates. The whole procedure is computerized. The method proposed is for a fixed cropping pattern. So automation of the corn lete procedure is most useful for working out alter- - native optimal project sizes for various cropping patterns.