Climate change, growing populations, and increasing wealth are increasing demand for food, energy, and water. Additionally, water stress is expected to increase in the future in areas with high rates of seasonality of precipitation, due to increased variability in precipitation. One approach to limiting the impact of climate change on food system productions is through the intensive and extensive expansion of irrigated agriculture. This study develops a hydro-economic model to assess future agriculture production possibilities and the role of irrigation water in the Pacific Slope region of Guatemala, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. A range of future scenarios are presented to account for uncertainty around irrigation infrastructure expansion, future crop prices, incentives for production of biomass for bioenergy, and water availability and irrigation demand due to climate change. We find that current surface water irrigation infrastructure increases agricultural output by value in the region by about 5.3% compared to a fully rainfed system. Additionally, we show that with expanded irrigation infrastructure, agricultural output could increase by between 3.4% and 18.4% relative to current levels under current climate conditions, but the value of agricultural production could increase under climate change with projected output from current and expanded irrigation infrastructure resulting in an increase of 1.2–24.8% relative to current irrigation levels. We also present evidence that the marginal benefit from increased irrigation access to smallholder farmers is nearly equal to that received by large-scale industrial agricultural producers.

气候变化、人口增长和财富增加正在增加对食物、能源和水的需求。此外，由于降水的变异性增加，预计未来降水季节性高的地区的水资源压力将增加。限制气候变化对粮食系统生产的影响的一种方法是通过集约和广泛扩张灌溉农业。本研究开发了一个水文经济模型，以评估危地马拉太平洋斜坡地区未来农业生产的可能性和灌溉水的作用，该地区是该国生产力最高的农业地区之一。提出了一系列未来情景，以说明灌溉基础设施扩建、未来作物价格、生物能源生物质生产激励措施的不确定性，以及气候变化导致的水资源可用性和灌溉需求。我们发现，与完全雨养系统相比，目前的地表水灌溉基础设施使该地区的农业产值增加了约 5.3%。此外，我们表明，随着灌溉基础设施的扩大，在当前气候条件下，农业产出相对于当前水平可能增加 3.4% 至 18.4%，但在气候变化下，农业生产的价值可能会随着当前和扩大的灌溉基础设施的预计产出而增加导致相对于当前灌溉水平增加 1.2-24.8%。我们还提供证据表明，增加灌溉对小农户的边际收益几乎等于大型工业农业生产者所获得的收益。