Shadow price and real cost of water for irrigation in Acámbaro, Guanajuato

Abstract

The real, complete, and sufficient knowledge of the current water situation in Mexico is necessary to generate policies that lead to concrete actions to address the water problem in the country. Determine the real value of water contributes to create direct, focused, and objective solutions, for which the value of water for irrigation was estimated through two methodologies, cost accounting and mathematical programming, to calculate the real value of water in the study area. The cost accounting considers the total of the costs incurred to obtain the water for irrigation and calculates its value as the sum of the costs. Mathematical programming considers water as a productive factor and establishes the value of water as the shadow price of the factor based on the technical coefficients of production. The total cost of water, which is from this perspective the real value of water, estimated with the first methodology was $ 1.03 m³. The mathematical programming showed a value of $ 0.95 m³ for the water shadow price.