Water efficiency projects sound like a win-win for western farmers and the environment. But most of the money — including the $50 million recently pledged by the U.S. Department of Interior and the USDA — spent trying to save water on farms fail to take human nature into account and may make the problem worse.
“Human behavior is complex,” says Bloomberg. “Cutting-edge techniques to increase water efficiency are designed and tested by agricultural scientists and engineers. This research usually focuses on the performance of new technologies and practices, with human behavior held constant. When human behavior enters into the mix, the results may look quite different.”
Researchers from the University of California- Davis and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers found that farmers in the Great Plains actually increased their water usage by 3 percent when they switched to more efficient drip irrigation lines. This may have been because farmers felt they were saving so much water, they could afford to turn the irrigation on more often. Or maybe growers realized that more efficient watering systems could lead to bigger yields.
The USDA has recognized the need to incorporate behavioral data into its experiments, and has set up three academic centers for that purpose. But no federal officials have said yet whether or how empirical data or the behavioral sciences will play into the recent multi-million dollar water project.