A stochastic production frontier model of irrigation is used to analyze sources of economic inefficiency in irrigation practices of Nebraska com producers and the extent that field information from soil moisture monitoring, commercial scheduling and/or weather reports increases economic efficiency. The results indicate that farm irrigation practices have an average technical efficiency of 81% (defined as the ratio of actualized production to maximum potential production for a level of inputs). Field information from moisture sensors can improve technical efficiency by 3.9%. The value of information provided by moisture sensors depends on the technical efficiency of the farmer and ranges from $58.23 per hectare for an efficient farmer to $40.29 for an inefficient producer. The elasticity of derived demand for water is estimated to be −1.095.
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McGuckin et al. (1992) studied this question.
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