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Improvement in irrigation water use efficiency: a strategy for climate change adaptation and sustainable development of Vietnamese tea production

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Abstract

Irrigation is indispensable to overcome insufficient rainfall and to achieve a stabilized yield for tea production. As the severe scarcity of water resources because of climate change, water conservation through efficient irrigation has turned into a vital strategy for tea sector in solving this rising challenge. This paper analyzes irrigation water use efficiency of small-scale tea farms in Vietnam and identifies its determinants applying stochastic frontier analysis. Results showed that under decreasing returns to scale, the mean irrigation water use efficiency was 42.19 %, indicating the existence of substantial water waste. If farmers become more efficient in using water, saving 57.81 % of irrigation water is possible unaccompanied by reducing the observed output. The factors affecting tea farms’ irrigation water use efficiency were investigated by Tobit model. Gender, water shortage awareness, soil and water conservation practice, off-farm income share, extension services access and well water utilization showed significant influence on the efficiency of irrigation water. The study’ results provide insights to policymakers in implementing better water resource management amid climate change.

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Notes

  1. Production frontier shows maximum output possibilities that can be produced with current inputs used (Gans et al. 2011).

  2. Mean value of VIF is equal to 1.27.

  3. Prob > Chi-square = 0.8080, indicating that the null hypothesis of constant variance is accepted.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded in 2014 by the Monbukagakusho scholarship (Study Number 26310311), the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology and the Setsutaro Kobayashi Memorial Fund. The authors are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their appreciated recommendations and comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Environmental Economics Laboratory, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences, Kyushu University, 6-10-1, Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka City, Japan

    Nguyen Bich Hong & Mitsuyasu Yabe

  2. Thai Nguyen University of Economics & Business and Administration, Thai Nguyen, Vietnam

    Nguyen Bich Hong

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  1. Nguyen Bich Hong
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  2. Mitsuyasu Yabe
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Correspondence to Nguyen Bich Hong.

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Hong, N.B., Yabe, M. Improvement in irrigation water use efficiency: a strategy for climate change adaptation and sustainable development of Vietnamese tea production. Environ Dev Sustain 19, 1247–1263 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9793-8

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