An Assessment of Future Markets for Crops Grown Along the Columbia River: Economic Implications of Increases in Production Resulting from New Agricultural Water Rights Under the Columbia River Initiative

This report examines the likely effects of additional agricultural water rights under the ColumbiaRiver Initiative (CRI) on net crop revenues (hay, orchards, vegetables, potatoes, wheat, and othercrops) in the state of Washington over the next 20 years. This study corrects for four potentiallyserious methodological flaws made in two previous studies associated with the CRI andconcludes that those studies substantially overestimated the net revenues accruing to producers inthe Columbia River area from new irrigated acreage under the CRI. In fact, the net revenues aremore likely to be negative than positive. Methodological errors made in the two previous studieslead to results that support a policy prescription that is just the opposite of what would be in thebest economic interest of the state of Washington and the Columbia River region.