Measuring water-use in response to climate change: an analysis of the efficiency of Italian crop production system

Official meteo-climatic statistics show the variability of weather conditions. Their effects on socioeconomic and natural environments should be analyzed in multi-dimensional studies. Among sectors, agriculture is expected to be the most sensitive as well as water resources availability. The aim of our analysis is to measure the performance of Italian regions in crop production by estimating both production technology - including a measure of irrigation water used as input - output elasticities and returns to scale and productive efficiency or technical efficiency where rainfalls and temperatures are proxies of CC conditions in the period 2000-2010 at Italian regional level, using the stochastic frontier approach (SFA). The scarce official statistics on irrigation water in agriculture make our analysis challenging. Our results point out the need i) to strengthen official statistics on irrigation water to improve the analysis on inputs of farmer’s crop production in Italy; ii) to update meteo-climatic and hydrological measures according to the official international guidelines.