Abstract:

The popularization of water-saving irrigation technology has become the main means of government poverty intervention in arid and semi-arid regions of China, but this remains untested. Here, based on data from 540 farmers and binary logistic modeling we analyzed incidence and vulnerability poverty of water-saving irrigation technology under drought risk. Using the time of water-saving irrigation as an instrumental variable to solve the endogenous estimation model, we restructured the application of water-saving irrigation technology and drought risk variables to estimate the robustness on poverty reduction. We found that the drought risk is a key factor in farmer poverty, and loss of agricultural drought increases of each 1 CNY will increase the incidence and vulnerability of poverty by 16.6% and 4.0%. The technique of water-saving irrigation has significantly reduced the incidence and vulnerability of poverty. The adoption willingness of irrigation technology increases each one level which will reduce the current and future probability of poverty by 10.5% and 2.6% respectively. Water-saving irrigation technology adoption absorbs the drought risk the negative effect on the incidence of poverty, but eases the drought risk effect impact on poverty vulnerability which is not significant. Poverty alleviation policy arrangements should pay attention to enhancing farmers anti-drought risk shock awareness and comprehensive capacity of farmer resistant drought risk shock; increase water-saving irrigation technology adoption of dryland farming areas in Northwest China; irrigation technology should play an important role in the promotion of technology’s precise poverty; and build and cultivate a better rural market economic system to increase employment opportunities.

Key words: drought risk shock, water-saving irrigation technology adoption, poverty reduction effects, instrumental variable, farmer, Gansu