The efficiency analysis of irrigation districts in Gediz River basin

Lack of water in adequate quantity and quality is one of the main constraints to augment agricultural production which will be required more in the future due to the population increase. So, great importance should be given to the issues of sustainable water use in which assessment of irrigation efficiencies will be a reasonable starting step.By the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which base on linear programming, it is possible to determine that the decision unit is efficient or not. In this study, the main aim is to determine irrigation efficiencies of irrigation districts located in the Gediz river basin which has 110 000 ha irrigation area. For this purpose, 10 irrigation associations which operate in the lower part of Gediz river basin are evaluated in respect of irrigation efficiency. To this end, the used input oriented DEA model consider two inputs; water volume supplied (m3) and the total irrigated area (m2), and one output, the total value of agricultural production (TL). The EMS (Efficiency Measurement System) software is used in the analyses. Analyses have been accompanied by a 3-year data (2009-2011), and the variation of efficiency scores over the years examined.As a result of this study, it is determined that there has been an increment in the number of efficient irrigation districts from 3 to 6 along the relevant years; however, the irrigation districts namely Gediz, Mesir and Salihli Right Bank were not able to increase their low efficiency scores. For the inefficient irrigation districts, the possible reasons of inefficiency are investigated, and the target amounts of irrigation water and irrigation area that ensure the same agricultural production are determined.