The paper focuses on improvement in access to the natural resources land and water to bridge the economic divide in South African agriculture. The relevance of the approach to bridging the economic divide, progress made since 1994 in land and water reform and problems experienced and strategies...

Mathematical programming was used to optimise utility efficient deficit irrigation schedules for maize in Vaalharts, based on certainty equivalence assuming an exponential utility function. Total gross margin risk resulting from production risk of alternative deficit irrigation practices was...

Stochastic efficiency with respect to an exponential utility function was used to determine utility-efficient water-conserving irrigation schedules for wheat and maize based on certainty equivalents. Total gross margin risk resulting from production risk of alternative deficit irrigation...

This paper describes the development of a decision support model for regional agricultural resource utilisation. The analysis was generated in a spatial context and the optimisation technique was interactive with a geographical information system (GIS). Economic and operational research...

This paper has two objectives: first, to identify the main contaminants responsible for high treatment costs in the Umgeni catchment area, and second, to predict treatment costs from observed levels of contaminants. A partial adjustment model of treatment costs is estimated for the DV Harris...

The potential impact of the current South African industrial biofuels strategy on the economic feasibility of biofuel production in South Africa is analysed and discussed. The analysis is then taken a step further by means of a scenario to analyse the potential impacts of higher global prices on...

Irrigation farmers in the lower reaches of the Vaal and Riet Rivers are experiencing substantial yield reductions in certain crops and more profitable crops have been withdrawn from production, hypothesised, as a result of generally poor but especially fluctuating water quality. In this paper...

Deficit irrigation and increasing irrigation application efficiency were analysed as water-utilisation strategies through chance-constrained linear programming (CCLP) to establish whether these strategies were economically advantageous and water conserving. Deficit irrigation was modelled...

Technological information is used to assess KwaZulu-Natal commercial sugarcane farmers' intra-plot (panel) soil conservation relative to requirements of the Conservation of Natural Resources Act of 1983. Findings indicate that farmers consider enforcement of the Act to be unlikely and that 28...

The true value of irrigation water in the Olifants river irrigation system is determined using a static deterministic linear programming model. This paper illustrates that a water market will generate price signals which will reflect the true scarcity of water. If the water market is left to...