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Agriculture in the U.S.

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In the past several years, there has been much public interest regarding agricultural practices and irrigation in the western United States. With pressures of climate change mounting in the mind of Americans, the allocation of scarce water resources has become an important political issue. When at first, farmlands in the western U.S. were ideally located to depend heavily on natural water resources or cheap irrigation methods, today these costs are greatly elevated. The marginal cost of irrigation in the West has changed greatly, as have other viable uses for this water. Public discourse has shown that this water currently being allocated toward oftentimes-inefficient farmland irrigation can also be used for municipal areas or even conserved altogether. As scarcity of this precious resource rises, the opportunity cost of electing a certain use for the water over another also expands. (Wichelns)
It is difficult to determine how much water a certain farmland production organization should be spending in normative terms because there are so many variables involved. This is because the cost of irrigation in the U.S. fluctuates dramatically based on so many components: supply and demand for the particular crop grown, geographic location, existing natural water sources, type of irrigation method used and even federal and state subsidies.
The problem is, famers still need to irrigate. Much of the western United States is quite arid, and agricultural operations cannot simply eliminate irrigation because of their environmental conscience. A viable policy objective in the agricultural industry must be able to incorporate sustainable irrigation processes, instead of suggesting that farmers eradicate their irrigation. West of the 100th merid...

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... 2 (December 1991) , pp. 194-206

WORKS CITED

Economic Factors Shaping Western Water Allocation. Henry J. Vaux, Jr. American Journal of
Agricultural Economics , Vol. 68, No. 5, Proceedings Issue (Dec., 1986) , pp. 1135-1142

Gates, Clive T.. Climate change & agriculture. Limited 1st ed. Hall, A.C.T.: Gilgal International Training Academy, 1995. Print.

"GUSILCAN." : October 2009. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2014. .

Multicrop Production Decisions in Western Irrigated Agriculture: The Role of Water Price.
Michael R. Moore, Noel R. Gollehon and Marc B. Carey. American Journal of
Agricultural Economics , Vol. 76, No. 4 (Nov., 1994) , pp. 859-874

Wichelns, Dennis. "Agricultural Water Pricing: United States." Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010): n. pag. oecd.org/unitedstates. Web. 2
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