Economic Impact of Ensuring the Access to Water by a Dam on Farmers in Ghasredasht Kamin District

Ensuring access to water reduces the effects of water fluctuations caused by farmers. Under normal conditions, an increase in the reliability of surface water is expected to increase the amount of perennial crops grown and expected farm profits and changes in the distribution of surface water can increase or decrease the amount of supplemental water procured. In this study mathematical model be used to study the effects of water reliability increasing on farmers, income and crop pattern of farm. In this context, the impact of water reliability increasing on farmers’ income and crop pattern was then examined using chance constrained programming. For this purpose, expected income maximization model were applied to determine optimal crop pattern, expected gross margin under with and without certainty condition at representative farms of homogenous groups. A sample of 131 farmers was selected for interview and collected necessary farm level data in 2014-2015. The sample farms were drawn using stratified random sampling. The results showed that water reliability increasing lead to increase farmers, income and level of crop compared to the current status. So that the expected earnings for producers who use surface water and combined water in drought conditions, increase by 136.9 -623.9 and 2.01-5.33percent, respectively. Also, results indicated that the largest increasing in expected income as a consequence of the water reliability increasing is directed toward farmers who use surface water from river. These groups of farms ultimately suffered a severe reduction in expected income as a consequence of the drought, water unreliability condition, largely because their access to water was cut substantially. The results also revealed that the least increasing in expected income as a consequence of the water reliability increasing is directed toward homogenous group of farms that use groundwater or conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water. Finally, the results of this study can help farmers to choose crop pattern, irrigation strategies and irrigation method in such a way that farmers, income and water productivity index will be optimized, also due to the effect of increasing the confidence of the amount of available water on farmers' income, it is recommended that this project be considered in the evaluation of water projects that more projects can be implemented.