Farmer Evaluation of Irrigation Services. Collective or Self-Supplied?

Economic evaluation of farmland is an important issue in the agricultural sector. The aim of this study was to quantify the economic value of land in the farmland area of the Reclamation and Irrigation Board of Capitanata (Apulia region), differentiating by irrigation water service type (collective or self-supplied). The analysis involved a heuristic evaluation using the hedonic pricing method of the sales comparison approach. The data was gathered through a survey on a group of 75 farmers. The results showed higher capitalization values in the case of lands served by self-supplied sources from groundwater. Actually, in the long-term, an enhanced reliability was found for the self-supplied rather than collective services. The findings highlight the importance for collective water associations of differentiating water rights allocations on the basis of a volume guarantee. In future, water user associations of collective services could consider a different water right system along with price discrimination to efficiently allocate the resource among farmers and improve the sustainability of current water management.