A spacial impact analysis of water accessibility on farming in the Brazilian semiarid

Abstract

The semiarid is Brazil's poorest region and is historically vulnerable to water scarcity, particularly due to a majority of its population being dependent on low-scale family farming. Public works designed to stock and supply water have had great effects in reducing the more severe impacts of droughts on human and animal life, but the region continues to have a relatively poor farming sector, marked by low productivity. In the paper, reasons behind such disappointing economic development are discussed, with water scarcity receiving particular attention due to both technical and political matters. The creation of an Accessibility Index, such as formulated by Hansen (1959), is proposed for the estimation of the impacts of water accessibility (as defined by the Regional Sciences literature) on farming production in a Brazilian municipality level in the semiarid sub-region, with the utilization of agricultural production data from the PAM-IBGE database, livestock data from the PPM-IBGE database and water supply data from the National Water Agency (ANA) for the formulation of a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR).