Microeconomics of irrigation with saline water

Water management and reuse at the field level are analyzed under saline, limited drainage conditions. A function relating crop yield and deep percolation flows to applied water and salinity concentration is developed. This function fits simulated data well and is tractable for theoretical and empirical analysis of irrigation economics. With a single irrigation source, irrigation water for cotton and tomatoes at first increases and then decreases with salt concentration. Drain-water reuse is found to be an efficient strategy in events of high surface-water prices and costly solutions to drainage-related environmental problems. However, blending freshwater and drainage appears plausible only under surface water scarcity.