Soumya Balasubramanya - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Soumya Balasubramanya
Agricultural Economics, Oct 6, 2022
With rising physical and economic scarcity of water, increasing or sustaining agricultural produc... more With rising physical and economic scarcity of water, increasing or sustaining agricultural production while limiting or reducing consumptive water use is an urgent challenge. This article examines the case of four countries—India, China, western United States, and Israel—where there is a long history of irrigated agriculture with significant public and private investments, to identify key themes for managing irrigation under increasing physical and economic water scarcity. The focus of irrigation management has expanded from investing in irrigation infrastructure to reforming institutions; strengthening policies pertaining to irrigation prices and rights; using incentives to reward reductions in irrigation application; and improving irrigation efficiency. However, this may not be sufficient to reduce consumptive use of water in agriculture. Reducing freshwater use in agriculture will require cost‐effective harnessing of other water sources through processes such as desalination and wastewater reuse, which may be difficult to implement in most geographies. Changes to policies in other sectors will likely be needed, especially in food procurement and land‐use, which require balancing water security with food security, and supporting potential losses in livelihoods and incomes from such changes. Finally, reductions in agricultural water use in a country will likely have implications for water use in other countries, through imports.
Environmental Research Letters
Water Economics and Policy, 2022
Policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa have placed considerable emphasis on expanding irrigated agric... more Policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa have placed considerable emphasis on expanding irrigated agriculture. This is in response to the subcontinent’s growing population pressure, coupled with production risks associated with declining and variable rainfall. Irrigation is viewed as an important strategy to improve food security and protect rural livelihoods, with small-scale irrigation identified as the preferred strategy. And yet, adoption of irrigation has been slow, and irrigation investments are often underutilized. Expanding irrigated agriculture through increases in cultivated area alone will not be sufficient for greater food security; land and water productivity of irrigated agriculture needs to be increased, and this may in fact help accelerate the adoption of irrigation. Shared irrigation investments among small farmers are going to be challenging to sustain as smallholder households diversify their livelihoods, and do not cultivate field crops every season. For individual irr...
Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 2016
Safe emptying and disposal of fecal sludge from pit latrines in rural areas has become a priority... more Safe emptying and disposal of fecal sludge from pit latrines in rural areas has become a priority for the Government of Bangladesh. In this paper, we calculate the volume and characterize the hazards of managing sludge to identify technologies for safely emptying rural single pits. In Bhaluka subdistrict, an estimated 15,000 m3 of sludge is produced annually. Physical, chemical, and microbial analysis of samples of sludge taken from pit latrines indicate that the sludge has a high moisture content of around 90%, a C:N ration of 10:1, and a helminth presence of 41 eggs/g. In a field test of alternative emptying technologies, simple pumps such as the gulper emerged as feasible for use in rural areas, due to the liquid nature of the sludge, narrow roads, and limited incomes of rural households. The results suggest that current practices of emptying liquid sludge manually without any protective equipment poses risks to those who handle sludge, and the process needs to be semi-mechanized...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
We randomized 43 villages in Bangladesh to receive information on well-water arsenic that emphasi... more We randomized 43 villages in Bangladesh to receive information on well-water arsenic that emphasized water safety relative to the national standard (bright-line message) or provided additional information on how risks from exposure increase with arsenic levels (gradient message). The gradient message led to 50% more switching of water sources when the arsenic level was moderately unsafe, but 40% less switching at high arsenic levels. The differences in behavior are at least partially explained by differences in risk perception that developed after the information campaign.
Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
Environmental Research Letters
Groundwater is rapidly declining in India. A history of subsidized well-drilling, pumps, and ener... more Groundwater is rapidly declining in India. A history of subsidized well-drilling, pumps, and energy with minimal restrictions on well installation, in a landscape characterized by millions of smallholder farmers renders standard ‘market-based’ approaches such as water pricing and quotas on abstraction challenging to introduce from a cost, political and institutional perspective. Instead, federal and state governments are experimenting with positive incentive programs, which draw from payments-for-ecosystem-service-type market approaches, by rewarding reductions in groundwater abstraction rather than penalizing abstraction. Whether such programs succeed will depend, among other things, on the state of informal groundwater markets (IGMs) where wells owners supply irrigation services to other farmers, often smaller ones, for a charge; in addition to irrigating their own fields. While IGMs are quite extensive, data on them is poor and outdated, and are often overlooked in the design of ...
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Effects of irrigation on household food security are examined, in a context of droughts and while... more Effects of irrigation on household food security are examined, in a context of droughts and while controlling for point of crop harvest sales, employing longitudinal household and agriculture data collected by the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) in Niger. Using panel fixed effects, we find that irrigation helped decrease food insecurity by 14 percent, increased food consumption expenditure by 11 percent, and improved dietary diversity, despite droughts. Irrigators had higher cash incomes as they sold a higher share of the harvest and had higher crop revenues; and irrigators had higher consumption of purchased and nutritious food items such as fruits, vegetables, and meat products. These effects were found for irrigators that primarily sold their crop harvest locally to village shops or neighbors as well as those who sold in bulk to regional or national traders. In a context where there is likely under-measurement of irrigation, and policies and projects are focused on developing irrigation in geographies with greater access to formal markets to maximize farmer profits; these results make a case for investing in irrigation in diverse geographies to support reductions in food insecurity.
How does access to less expensive energy for water lifting affect agricultural outcomes? We addre... more How does access to less expensive energy for water lifting affect agricultural outcomes? We address this question in the setting of West Bengal in eastern India where, in 2011, the government relaxed a permit policy for small electric pumps mounted on low-yield tubewells and provided a one-time subsidy on the fixed cost of connecting the pump to the grid in order to ease access to groundwater. Based on purposefully selected primary data, and using propensity score methods, we examine the cultivated areas, yields, value-added, and duration and frequency of irrigation for monsoon and winter rice for electric pump owners compared to diesel pump owners and water buyers in West Bengal. Electric pump ownership increases agricultural outcomes and water use at the extensive and intensive margins in both seasons, suggesting that electrification may have an impact on groundwater levels.
After Tajikistan emerged an independent country, major land reforms took place. Large collective ... more After Tajikistan emerged an independent country, major land reforms took place. Large collective farms were broken up into smaller (dekhan) private farms. This created a vacuum, because there was no provision to manage competing needs of water among private farms. Water user associations were created with the efforts of the government, and several international donors, to manage distribution of water between private farms and to share in maintenance of smaller canals. In this paper we provide a brief description of the creation of water user associations, as well as their roles and responsibilities. We then describe the opportunities for increasing livelihoods, and contributing to increased agricultural productivity. Can these WUAs improve access to and distribution of water? Would better irrigations services increase cropping areas? Would yields of cotton improve? Can these be an improvement in crop diversity? We identify the key existing gaps in knowledge, that would provide an understanding of the impacts of these associations on wellbeing. We also describe some of the challenges that may limit the efficacy of these associations. Are these institutions likely to be able to cover their operational costs? Can these institutions serve well as cropping decisions change? Are these institutions likely to represent the needs of female farmers? We identify the key factors that need to be examined more closely, that provide an understating of the resilience of these associations. The answers to these questions would provide important information for policies to support and strengthen water user associations in Tajikistan
Irrigation and Drainage, 2021
The use of improved technologies has been encouraged to improve irrigation on farms, especially i... more The use of improved technologies has been encouraged to improve irrigation on farms, especially in drought‐prone areas. However, farmers' irrigation decisions may be rather motivated by a desire to reduce risk of crop loss than to reduce water use. Using the case of Jordan, we contribute to the water‐saving debate by examining whether current irrigation frequency is influenced by past experiences of losses due to water shortage and whether preferences for technologies and irrigation advisory services are mediated by water shortage experiences. Our data are based on a survey of 304 fruit farms in the highlands that were all using drip irrigation, a popular way to “save” water globally. We find that farms that faced losses due to water shortages in the past are more likely to irrigate more frequently. More frequent irrigators who have such shortages are more likely to prefer receiving irrigation advisory information rather than upgrading technologies, while more frequent irrigators who have not faced such shortages are more likely to prefer upgrading irrigation technologies. Results suggest that irrigation management is motivated by risk reduction, not just by water conservation. Irrigation advisory services, hitherto neglected, may be an important component of agricultural water management in Jordan.
Global Food Security, 2019
HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial| 4.0 International License
Frequent droughts and rapidly depleting groundwater reserves have deepened the water scarcity cri... more Frequent droughts and rapidly depleting groundwater reserves have deepened the water scarcity crisis in Jordan. Even though most farms use 'water-saving' technologies, groundwater depletion continues at an alarming rate. We investigate how perceptions of physical water availability in the past are related to farmers' current irrigation behaviour – frequency of irrigation and methods used in determining irrigation need. Using primary data from a survey of 414 commercial farms in Mafraq and Azraq governorates, we find that respondents who perceived reduction in physical water availability and faced agricultural losses in the past irrigated more frequently and were more likely to use self-judgement in determining irrigation need. These relationships were more pronounced for smaller farms, farms with sandy soil, mono-cropping farms and farms where the owner was the manager. These effects were lower for farms that preferred internet-based and in-person approaches for receivin...
Agricultural Economics, Oct 6, 2022
With rising physical and economic scarcity of water, increasing or sustaining agricultural produc... more With rising physical and economic scarcity of water, increasing or sustaining agricultural production while limiting or reducing consumptive water use is an urgent challenge. This article examines the case of four countries—India, China, western United States, and Israel—where there is a long history of irrigated agriculture with significant public and private investments, to identify key themes for managing irrigation under increasing physical and economic water scarcity. The focus of irrigation management has expanded from investing in irrigation infrastructure to reforming institutions; strengthening policies pertaining to irrigation prices and rights; using incentives to reward reductions in irrigation application; and improving irrigation efficiency. However, this may not be sufficient to reduce consumptive use of water in agriculture. Reducing freshwater use in agriculture will require cost‐effective harnessing of other water sources through processes such as desalination and wastewater reuse, which may be difficult to implement in most geographies. Changes to policies in other sectors will likely be needed, especially in food procurement and land‐use, which require balancing water security with food security, and supporting potential losses in livelihoods and incomes from such changes. Finally, reductions in agricultural water use in a country will likely have implications for water use in other countries, through imports.
Environmental Research Letters
Water Economics and Policy, 2022
Policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa have placed considerable emphasis on expanding irrigated agric... more Policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa have placed considerable emphasis on expanding irrigated agriculture. This is in response to the subcontinent’s growing population pressure, coupled with production risks associated with declining and variable rainfall. Irrigation is viewed as an important strategy to improve food security and protect rural livelihoods, with small-scale irrigation identified as the preferred strategy. And yet, adoption of irrigation has been slow, and irrigation investments are often underutilized. Expanding irrigated agriculture through increases in cultivated area alone will not be sufficient for greater food security; land and water productivity of irrigated agriculture needs to be increased, and this may in fact help accelerate the adoption of irrigation. Shared irrigation investments among small farmers are going to be challenging to sustain as smallholder households diversify their livelihoods, and do not cultivate field crops every season. For individual irr...
Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 2016
Safe emptying and disposal of fecal sludge from pit latrines in rural areas has become a priority... more Safe emptying and disposal of fecal sludge from pit latrines in rural areas has become a priority for the Government of Bangladesh. In this paper, we calculate the volume and characterize the hazards of managing sludge to identify technologies for safely emptying rural single pits. In Bhaluka subdistrict, an estimated 15,000 m3 of sludge is produced annually. Physical, chemical, and microbial analysis of samples of sludge taken from pit latrines indicate that the sludge has a high moisture content of around 90%, a C:N ration of 10:1, and a helminth presence of 41 eggs/g. In a field test of alternative emptying technologies, simple pumps such as the gulper emerged as feasible for use in rural areas, due to the liquid nature of the sludge, narrow roads, and limited incomes of rural households. The results suggest that current practices of emptying liquid sludge manually without any protective equipment poses risks to those who handle sludge, and the process needs to be semi-mechanized...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
We randomized 43 villages in Bangladesh to receive information on well-water arsenic that emphasi... more We randomized 43 villages in Bangladesh to receive information on well-water arsenic that emphasized water safety relative to the national standard (bright-line message) or provided additional information on how risks from exposure increase with arsenic levels (gradient message). The gradient message led to 50% more switching of water sources when the arsenic level was moderately unsafe, but 40% less switching at high arsenic levels. The differences in behavior are at least partially explained by differences in risk perception that developed after the information campaign.
Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
Environmental Research Letters
Groundwater is rapidly declining in India. A history of subsidized well-drilling, pumps, and ener... more Groundwater is rapidly declining in India. A history of subsidized well-drilling, pumps, and energy with minimal restrictions on well installation, in a landscape characterized by millions of smallholder farmers renders standard ‘market-based’ approaches such as water pricing and quotas on abstraction challenging to introduce from a cost, political and institutional perspective. Instead, federal and state governments are experimenting with positive incentive programs, which draw from payments-for-ecosystem-service-type market approaches, by rewarding reductions in groundwater abstraction rather than penalizing abstraction. Whether such programs succeed will depend, among other things, on the state of informal groundwater markets (IGMs) where wells owners supply irrigation services to other farmers, often smaller ones, for a charge; in addition to irrigating their own fields. While IGMs are quite extensive, data on them is poor and outdated, and are often overlooked in the design of ...
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Effects of irrigation on household food security are examined, in a context of droughts and while... more Effects of irrigation on household food security are examined, in a context of droughts and while controlling for point of crop harvest sales, employing longitudinal household and agriculture data collected by the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) in Niger. Using panel fixed effects, we find that irrigation helped decrease food insecurity by 14 percent, increased food consumption expenditure by 11 percent, and improved dietary diversity, despite droughts. Irrigators had higher cash incomes as they sold a higher share of the harvest and had higher crop revenues; and irrigators had higher consumption of purchased and nutritious food items such as fruits, vegetables, and meat products. These effects were found for irrigators that primarily sold their crop harvest locally to village shops or neighbors as well as those who sold in bulk to regional or national traders. In a context where there is likely under-measurement of irrigation, and policies and projects are focused on developing irrigation in geographies with greater access to formal markets to maximize farmer profits; these results make a case for investing in irrigation in diverse geographies to support reductions in food insecurity.
How does access to less expensive energy for water lifting affect agricultural outcomes? We addre... more How does access to less expensive energy for water lifting affect agricultural outcomes? We address this question in the setting of West Bengal in eastern India where, in 2011, the government relaxed a permit policy for small electric pumps mounted on low-yield tubewells and provided a one-time subsidy on the fixed cost of connecting the pump to the grid in order to ease access to groundwater. Based on purposefully selected primary data, and using propensity score methods, we examine the cultivated areas, yields, value-added, and duration and frequency of irrigation for monsoon and winter rice for electric pump owners compared to diesel pump owners and water buyers in West Bengal. Electric pump ownership increases agricultural outcomes and water use at the extensive and intensive margins in both seasons, suggesting that electrification may have an impact on groundwater levels.
After Tajikistan emerged an independent country, major land reforms took place. Large collective ... more After Tajikistan emerged an independent country, major land reforms took place. Large collective farms were broken up into smaller (dekhan) private farms. This created a vacuum, because there was no provision to manage competing needs of water among private farms. Water user associations were created with the efforts of the government, and several international donors, to manage distribution of water between private farms and to share in maintenance of smaller canals. In this paper we provide a brief description of the creation of water user associations, as well as their roles and responsibilities. We then describe the opportunities for increasing livelihoods, and contributing to increased agricultural productivity. Can these WUAs improve access to and distribution of water? Would better irrigations services increase cropping areas? Would yields of cotton improve? Can these be an improvement in crop diversity? We identify the key existing gaps in knowledge, that would provide an understanding of the impacts of these associations on wellbeing. We also describe some of the challenges that may limit the efficacy of these associations. Are these institutions likely to be able to cover their operational costs? Can these institutions serve well as cropping decisions change? Are these institutions likely to represent the needs of female farmers? We identify the key factors that need to be examined more closely, that provide an understating of the resilience of these associations. The answers to these questions would provide important information for policies to support and strengthen water user associations in Tajikistan
Irrigation and Drainage, 2021
The use of improved technologies has been encouraged to improve irrigation on farms, especially i... more The use of improved technologies has been encouraged to improve irrigation on farms, especially in drought‐prone areas. However, farmers' irrigation decisions may be rather motivated by a desire to reduce risk of crop loss than to reduce water use. Using the case of Jordan, we contribute to the water‐saving debate by examining whether current irrigation frequency is influenced by past experiences of losses due to water shortage and whether preferences for technologies and irrigation advisory services are mediated by water shortage experiences. Our data are based on a survey of 304 fruit farms in the highlands that were all using drip irrigation, a popular way to “save” water globally. We find that farms that faced losses due to water shortages in the past are more likely to irrigate more frequently. More frequent irrigators who have such shortages are more likely to prefer receiving irrigation advisory information rather than upgrading technologies, while more frequent irrigators who have not faced such shortages are more likely to prefer upgrading irrigation technologies. Results suggest that irrigation management is motivated by risk reduction, not just by water conservation. Irrigation advisory services, hitherto neglected, may be an important component of agricultural water management in Jordan.
Global Food Security, 2019
HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial| 4.0 International License
Frequent droughts and rapidly depleting groundwater reserves have deepened the water scarcity cri... more Frequent droughts and rapidly depleting groundwater reserves have deepened the water scarcity crisis in Jordan. Even though most farms use 'water-saving' technologies, groundwater depletion continues at an alarming rate. We investigate how perceptions of physical water availability in the past are related to farmers' current irrigation behaviour – frequency of irrigation and methods used in determining irrigation need. Using primary data from a survey of 414 commercial farms in Mafraq and Azraq governorates, we find that respondents who perceived reduction in physical water availability and faced agricultural losses in the past irrigated more frequently and were more likely to use self-judgement in determining irrigation need. These relationships were more pronounced for smaller farms, farms with sandy soil, mono-cropping farms and farms where the owner was the manager. These effects were lower for farms that preferred internet-based and in-person approaches for receivin...