Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:59:08.894Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Irrigation in the Development of Agriculture in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2018

Eric C. Edwards  and
Steven M. Smith Open the ORCID record for Steven M. Smith [Opens in a new window]
Eric C. Edwards*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University, Nelson Hall 4332, 2801 Founders Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695.
Steven M. Smith*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Division of Economics and Business and Affiliate of the Payne Institute for Earth Resources at the Colorado School of Mines, Engineering Hall 323, 1500 Illinois Street, Golden, CO 80401.
*
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examine the role of irrigation in explaining U.S. agricultural gains post-1940. Specifically, we analyze how productivity and farm values changed in the western United States as a result of technological and policy changes that expanded access to ground and surface water. To statistically identify the effects, we compare counties based on their potential access to irrigation water defined by physical characteristics. We find areas with access to large streams and/or groundwater increase crop production relative to areas with only small streams by $19 billion annually, equivalent to 90 percent of the total annual increase in the western United States after 1940.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 1103 - 1141
Copyright
© 2018 The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors wish to thank Muyang Ge for her research assistance, as well as Lee Alston, Zeynep Hanson, Edwyna Harris, Bryan Leonard, Gary Libecap, Sara Sutherland, two anonymous reviewers, and editor William Collins for comments on earlier drafts. The research was also improved by participants at Economic History Association Annual Meeting, Boulder, CO, 91st Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International, Portland, OR, and comments at the Vassar College Economic Seminar Series, the University of Florida, and North Carolina State University. The authors acknowledge the support of Utah Agricultural Experiment Station (USDA NIFA, Hatch project 1004932). All remaining errors are our own.

References

Anderson, Terry L., and Hill, Peter J.. “The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West.” Journal of Law & Economics 18, no. 1 (1975): 163–179.Google Scholar
Billington, David P., and Jackson, Donald C.. Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Bretsen, Stephen N., and Hill, Peter J.. “Irrigation Institutions in the American West.” UCLA J. Envtl. L. & Pol’y 25 (2006): 283–441.Google Scholar
Burness, H. Stuart, and Quirk, James P.. “Appropriative Water Rights and the Efficient Allocation of Resources.” American Economic Review 69, no. 1 (1979): 25–37.Google Scholar
Bowman, Isaiah. “Well-Drilling Methods (No. 257). Washington, DC: GPO, 1911.Google Scholar
Choi, Woonsup. “Streams, Gaining and Losing.” The International Encyclopedia of Geography. Somerset, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017.Google Scholar
Clark, Robert E. “Ground Water Legislation in the Light of Experience in the Western States.” Montana Law Review 22, no. 1 (1960): 42–59.Google Scholar
Clarke, Sally H. Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Cochrane, Willard W. The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Colorado Decision Support System (CDSS). Division 1 Irrigated Lands File. Denver, CO, 2017. Available at https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdss/division-1-south-platte.Google Scholar
Coman, Katharine. “Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation.” American Economic Review 1, no. 1 (1911): 1–19.Google Scholar
Coulter, John L. “Agricultural Development in the United States, 1900–1910.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 27, no. 1 (1912): 1–26.Google Scholar
Drillers Journal. Hydrologic Principles Involved: Factors Affecting Well Yield. The Johnson National Drillers Journal, July–August (1955): 8–10. Available at http://johnsonwellproducts.com/assets/pdfs/Driller%20Journals/1955.PDF.Google Scholar
Duflo, Esther, and Pande, Rohini. “Dams.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, no. 2 (2007): 601–646.Google Scholar
Gardner, Bruce L. American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Gisser, Micha. “Groundwater: Focusing on the Real Issue.” Journal of Political Economy 91, no. 6 (1983): 1001–1027.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R. “Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–2002.” Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2010. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02896.v3.Google Scholar
Hansen, Zeynep K., Libecap, Gary D., and Lowe, Scott E.. “Climate Variability and Water Infrastructure: Historical Experience in the Western United States.” In The Economics of Climate Change: Adaptations Past and Present, edited by Gary D. Libecap and Richard H. Steckel, 253–280. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Heermann, Dale F. “A Reflection on Irrigation Changes.” USDA Agriculture Research Service, Water Management Unit, Fort Collins, Colorado, 2003. Available at https://dspace.library.colostate.edu/bitstream/handle/10217/45159/104_2003HeermannAReflection.pdf?sequence=64&isAllowed=y.Google Scholar
Hess, Ralph H. “The Beginnings of Irrigation in the United States.” Journal of Political Economy 20, no. 8 (1912): 807–833.Google Scholar
Hornbeck, Richard, and Keskin, Pinar. “The Historically Evolving Impact of the Ogallala Aquifer: Agricultural Adaptation to Groundwater and Drought.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6, no. 1 (2014): 190–219.Google Scholar
Hornbeck, Richard, and Keskin, Pinar. “Does Agriculture Generate Local Economic Spillovers? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence from the Ogallala Aquifer.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 7, no. 2 (2015): 192–213.Google Scholar
Hutchins, Wells A., Lewis, M.R., and Ewing, P.A.. “Irrigation in the United States.” In Soils & Men: Yearbook of Agriculture, 1938, 693–703. Washington, DC: USDA, 1938.Google Scholar
Kitchens, Carl, and Fishback, Price. “Flip the Switch: The Impact of the Rural Electrification Administration 1935–1940.” Journal of Economic History 75, no. 4 (2015): 1161–1195.Google Scholar
Lamm, Brian. “Banking and the Agricultural Problems of the 1980s.” In History of the Eighties: Lessons for the Future: An Examination of the Banking Crises of the 1980s and Early 1990s: Volume I: An Examination of the Banking Crises of the 1980s and Early 1990s, Chapter 8, 259–290. Washington, DC: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 1997.Google Scholar
Leonard, Bryan, and Libecap, Gary D.. “Economic Analysis of Property Rights: First Possession of Water in the American West.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. w22185, Cambridge, MA, 2016.Google Scholar
Lewis, Joshua and Severnini, Edson, Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Rural Electrification: Evidence from the Historical Rollout of the U.S. Power Grid. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11243, Bonn, Germany, 2018. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3097361.Google Scholar
Lipscomb, Molly, Mobarak, Mushfiq A., and Barham, Tania. “Development Effects of Electrification: Evidence from the Topographic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 5, no. 2 (2013): 200–231.Google Scholar
Mead, Elwood. Irrigation Institutions: A Discussion of the Economic and Legal Questions Created by the Growth of Irrigated Agriculture in the West. London: Macmillan Company, 1910.Google Scholar
Minnesota Population Center. Historic Counties for the 1910–2010 Census of Population: Vector Digital Data. Minneapolis, MN, 2006. Available at http://www.nhgis.org.Google Scholar
Mundlak, Yair. “Economic Growth: Lessons from Two Centuries of American Agriculture.” Journal of Economic Literature 43, no. 4 (2005): 989–1024.Google Scholar
Pisani, Donald J. Water and American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902–1935. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.Google Scholar
PRISM Climate Group. Oregon State University, 2004. Available at http://prism.oregonstate.edu (created 4 April 2015).Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Wayne D. “The Impact of Technological Change on American Agriculture, 1862–1962.” Journal of Economic History 22 no. 4 (1962), 578–591.Google Scholar
Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. London: Penguin, 1993.Google Scholar
Shapiro, David L. “Can Public Investment Have a Positive Rate of Return?” Journal of Political Economy 81, no. 2 (1973): 401–413.Google Scholar
Schoengold, Karina, and Zilberman, David. “The Economics of Water, Irrigation, and Development.” Handbook of Agricultural Economics 3 (2007): 2933–2977.Google Scholar
Severnini, Edson R. “The Power of Hydroelectric Dams: Agglomeration Spillovers.” IZA DP No. 8082, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany, 2014.Google Scholar
Smith, George E.P. Oil Engines for Pump Irrigation and the Cost of Pumping. Experiment Station Bulletin Report no. 74. College of Agriculture, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ, 1915. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/10150/196351.Google Scholar
Smith, Steven M. “Common Property Resources and New Entrants: Uncovering the Bias and Effects of New Users.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 3, no. 1 (2016): 1–36.Google Scholar
Taylor, Henry C. “Economic Problems in Agriculture by Irrigation.” Journal of Political Economy 15, no. 4 (1907): 209–228.Google Scholar
Teele, Ray P. “Government Construction of Irrigation Works.” Journal of Political Economy 10, no. 3 (1902): 394–408.Google Scholar
US Bureau of the Census. “U.S. Census of Agriculture: 1950, Vol III, Irrigation of Agricultural Lands.” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. (1952).Google Scholar
USDA. Irrigation & Water Use. Online Report Based on 2012 US Agricultural Census Data, 2018. Accessed 5 September 2018. Available at https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use/background.aspx.Google Scholar
USDA NRCS. Digital General Soil Map of U.S.: Tabular Digital Data and Vector Digital Data. Fort Worth, Texas, 2006. Available at http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov.Google Scholar
USGS. USGS Small-scale Dataset - Major Dams of the United States 200603 Shapefile: Vector Digital Data. Reston, VA, 2006. Available at https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/581d051ee4b08da350d523db.Google Scholar
USGS. USGS Small-scale Dataset - 1:1,000,000-Scale Hydrographic Geodatabase of the United States - Conterminous United States: Vector digital data. Rolla, MO, 2014. Available at https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/581d0551e4b08da350d5273e.Google Scholar
USGS. Principal Aquifers of the 48 Conterminous United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands: Digital Data. Reston, VA, 2003. http://water.usgs.gov/lookup/getspatial?aquifers_us.Google Scholar
USGS EROS Data Center. GTOPO30 Global Digital Elevation Model: Raster Data Tiles. Sioux Falls, SD, 1996. Available at https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/GTOPO30.Google Scholar
Wahl, Richard W. Markets for Federal Water: Subsidies, Property Rights, and the Bureau of Reclamation. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1989.Google Scholar
Whitbeck, Ray H. “Irrigation in the United States.” Geographical Journal 54, no. 4 (1919): 221–331.Google Scholar
Winter, Thomas C. “The Role of Ground Water in Generating Streamflow in Headwater Areas and in Maintaining Base Flow.” JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association 43, no. 1 (2007): 15–25.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Edwards and Smith supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Edwards and Smith supplementary material(File)
File 27.4 MB