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Abstract
This study examines whether water use is efficient in Bangladesh agriculture compared
to other inputs. As agriculture is the major water using sector and water is most scarce
during winter due to low annual rainfall, the government here runs many irrigation
projects. Recently Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) leased out these
projects to various water user groups for maintenance and expenditure recovery. This
study estimates a translog production function for boro rice in the 7 hydrological
regions and derives marginal products of various inputs. Production functions are
estimated using data collected by International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on
expenditures of agricultural inputs and returns on investment from a nationally
representative sample of 1928 farm households from 64 districts of Bangladesh.
Results show that irrigation water use is less efficient compared to other agricultural
inputs, like land, labour, fertiliser and ploughing with power tiller.