ABSTRACT
This is a case study about the Weibei dry upland irrigation project in the eastern part of Guangzhong, the central region of Shaanxi Province, China. In this study, the use of land levelling to develop irrigated agriculture was compared to irrigation without land levelling. An economic evaluation of the environmental effects associated with each plan was also made. In the analysis, the replacement cost, shadow project, and compensation cost techniques were used to estimate costs associated with the different options. Three different land levelling techniques (shaving head, ditching and reeling) were examined, and their present values were calculated using various discount rates. These results were then compared to a control case: unleveiled land that used sprinkler irrigation. Yields were assumed the same for all four options and the study is therefore an example of a cost-effectiveness analysis. The results indicate that land levelling is economically preferred over unlevelled land with a sprinkler system (the control case). Among the three levelling techniques examined, reeling was the least-cost option when all costs (direct and indirect) were taken into account.
