Impacts of Iranian Agricultural Water Resources Conservation Policies (Case of Baft County in Dashtab Plain)

Water scarcity has made water management one of the top priorities in the world because of climate change and population growth on the one hand and increasing demand for food on the other. The present study aimed to simulate the effects of conservation policies on water resources in the Dashtab plain, Iran, using the positive mathematical programming (PMP) method. Data were collected by a questionnaire for which 136 questionnaires were filled by randomly sampled experts of Agricultural Jihad Organization. The results showed that out of the three policies adopted in this study including limiting irrigation inputs, reducing irrigation input subsidies, and reducing crop prices, reducing subsidies on irrigation inputs were the best policy to protect irrigation resources and farmers' incomes.