Net Economic Value of Irrigation for Major Crops by Decade

Four decades of data from 1981 to 2020 provide the net economic value for irrigated and rain-fed maize, rice, and wheat at a country or regional level. The dataset quantifies the trade-off between crop revenue and the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions from irrigation. It was authored by Yajie Zhang and published on figshare in 2026.

Use Cases

• Compare net economic value (NEV) for irrigated versus rain-fed maize across decades and countries.
• Analyze trends in the social cost of GHG emissions from rice cultivation over four decades.
• Model the relationship between wheat yield revenue and irrigation-associated CO2-equivalent emissions.
• Assess regional disparities in the economic-environmental trade-off for major crops from the 1980s to 2010s.

Strengths

• Covers four distinct decades from 1981 to 2020.
• Includes data for three globally significant staple crops: maize, rice, and wheat.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Dataset size is only 297.3 KB, indicating a limited scope and likely low row count.
• Spatial resolution is at country/region level, lacking sub-national granularity.
• Values are in constant 2010 USD, which may not reflect current economic conditions.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Yajie Zhang.

Time Range

1981 to 2020, aggregated by decade.

Freshness

Last updated date is 2026-04-07, suggesting the data is current.

Geography

Country and regional level globally.