Page 9 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.70, # 1, 2013, pp. 4-22

PET reflects biological factors such as the crop maturity rating and the stage of

growth and climatic conditions. The climatic conditions include the maximum and

minimum temperatures, growing degree days (GDD at 56 Degreees Fahrenheit),

humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction (Colette et al., 2004). PET is

obtained by entering the weather data into the corresponding equations. However,

to be able to apply this for other crops, PET needs to be adjusted to obtain actual

crop ET. Once PET is calculated, actual ET can be determined by multiplying PET

with the crop coefficients (K co). K cois also known as adjustment factor, which is the

ratio of observed crop water use to PET (Rogers, 2007).

The general objective of this study is to calculate the optimum levels of TW,

irrigation application and PPET for growing corn in the Texas Panhandle area in

order to obtain the maximum profits. The specific objectives are: 1) develop the

production functions for corn with respect to TW, irrigation and PPET which are

able to represent the conditions in the Texas Panhandle area; 2) use the production

functions to determine the optimum levels of TW, irrigation application and the

PPET in order to maximize profit. Then calculate the maximized profit at the

optimum levels of the three water approaches respectively; 3) estimate potential

benefits of ET Network in the irrigated agriculture in the study area.

Data and Methods

Data

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