systema b s t r a c tInnovative irrigation practices can enhance water efficiency, gaining an economic advantage while alsoreducing environmental burdens. In some cases the necessary knowledge has been provided by extensionservices, helping farmers to adapt and implement viable solutions, thus gaining more benefits fromirrigation technology. Often investment in technological improvements has incurred higher water prices,however, without gaining the full potential benefits through water efficiency. Farmers generally lackadequate means and incentives to know crops’ water use, actual irrigation applications, crops’ yieldresponse to different water management practices, and thus current on-farm water-efficiency levels.Those general difficulties are illustrated by our two case studies investigating options, stimuli and diffi-culties to improve water-efficient practices. The two areas have strong stimuli for improvement but lacka knowledge-exchange system to help farmers and resource managers identify scope for improvements.Partly for this reason, farmers’ responsibility for efficient water management has been displaced to hypo-thetical prospects, e.g. extra supplies from reuse of treated wastewater or a long-term low water pricing.In both cases a displaced responsibility complements the default assumption that farmers’ irrigationpractices already have adequate water-use efficiency. Under current circumstances, agricultural watermanagement will maintain the unknown water-efficiency level and farmers will have weaker incen-tives to make efforts for more efficient practices. A continuous knowledge-exchange is necessary so thatall relevant stakeholders can share greater responsibility across the entire water-supply chain. On thisbasis, more water-efficient management could combine wider environmental benefits with economicadvantage for farmers.© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license