This research critiques an article on water allocation policy by Michael Moore and Donald Negri (1992, pp. 29 43). The critique is presented in three discussions justification as a policy issue, description of the investigative approach, and evaluation.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation collects, stores, allocates, and distributes surface water resources to more than 150,000 farms located in 17 western states, and has been doing so for more than 90 years (Moore and Negri, 1992, p. 29). Federal water policy has been largely interpreted by western farmers within the context of water rights. Farmers have assumed that they have rights to specific quantities of water, and Bureau of Reclamation policy in the past has tended to support such an assumption (Moore and Negri, 1992, p. 30).
Over the past decade, however, increased demands for surface water by non agricultural users, together with often devastating drought conditions, have forced the federal government to reconsider water allocation policy (Michelsen and Young, 1993, pp. 1010 1020; Griffin and Hsu Shih, 1993, pp. 292 302). The competitive demands for federal surface water resources in the western states is, in an of itself, a sufficient justification for the consideration of this situation as a policy issue. When the effects on consumer prices for agricultural produce that may stem from changes in federal surface water allocation policy are considered, the policy issue justification becomes even stronger.
Description of the Investigative Approach to Analyzing the Issue
Moore and Negri (1992, p. 29) developed "a multioutput production model for the irrigated agricultural firm" to analyze the issue. The econometric analysis that ensued incorporated Bureau of Reclamation production data, together with "simulate production response to a" Bureau of Reclamation water conservation policy (Moore and Negri, 1992, p. 29). The multioutput profit function included in the m...