Economics of water use in vegetable production

Abstract

A quadratic type of production function was fitted to yield-water-nitrogen data obtained from an experiment conducted on brinjal in summer 1977 at the experimental station of the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Ressaraghatta. The use of response function has shown that nitrogen and water are substitutable to some extent in the production process. However, the range of substitutability was very limited and both th-5 inputs have to be usad at higher£levels of production. The sensitivity analysis has shown that the optimum combination of water and nitrogen seems to remain stable over a wide range of input and output prices. The water usage and hence tha demand for water was mostly dependent on the nitrogen us rather than price of water.