Accounting Cost of Irrigation in Sugarcane Production: A PAM Approach to Conventional, DRIP and SSI Methods in Tamilnadu, India

India has a comparative advantage in producing sugarcane. Sugarcane being a highly water consuming crop, more than 80 percentage of groundwater irrigation is done through deep-well pumping. Whereas faster depletion of groundwater stocks in 93 percentage of sugarcane cultivating area in India is revealed. Drip and Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) are two cultivation methods reducing water consumption. The study was conducted in Tamil Nadu, a major contributing State to production in India. This research is a comparative study on various sugarcane cultivation methods, iterating the comparative advantage of the State by accounting the cost of irrigation water thru Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) from which trade indicators could be derived. The indicators from PAM have shown that a developing country like India could be in a disadvantageous position when cost of irrigation water is accounted and urges the need to disseminate improved technologies such as drip system and SSI in sugarcane production.