Farmers' Adaptation to Groundwater Shortage in the Dry Areas: Improving Appropriation or Enhancing Accommodation?

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to identify farmers' strategies to adapt to groundwater shortage in vulnerable arid areas of south Tunisia. In the selected area, the potential of rainfed agriculture is very limited and groundwater is the only source of irrigation. With intensive overuse of groundwater signs of groundwater table depletion are starting to appear and farmers are becoming more concerned about water shortage. Based on a survey among farmers, we proceeded with a ‘principal component factors’ analysis followed by a ‘hierarchical clustering’ using Ward's method, in order to investigate different farmers' adaptation behaviour when faced with groundwater shortage. A set of relevant variables were used for this purpose. The cluster analysis generates three groups of farmers based on their irrigation practices, types of irrigation investment, and other related structural variables. A first group is formed by large farmers who combine both expansive strategies, by investing in enhancing groundwater appropriation, and accommodating strategies, by enhancing on‐farm management of the available resource. The second type of farmers are small and mainly focus on expansive strategies, while the third group is also composed of small farmers demonstrating purely contractive strategies, referring to reduced scale of farm operation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Eau Et Changement Climatique : Quelles Stratégies D’adaptation Pour La Gestion De L’eau D’irrigation Dans Le Sud-Est Tunisien

“…Eu égard à la littérature, ces résultats ont corroboré les résultats d'autres études en Afrique du Nord (Berahmani et al, 2012;Grami et Ben Rejeb, 2015 ;Frija et al, 2016), en Asie et du Moyen-Orient (Molle et al, 2010;Venot et al, 2010;Ghazouani et al, 2014 ;Alam, 2015), en Europe (Iglesias et Garroteb, 2015) et en Australie (Wheeler et al, 2013).…”

“…En revanche, l'accroissement très prononcé de la variabilité spatiale et temporelle du climat, la faiblesse du dispositif institutionnel d'adaptation à la rareté des ressources en eaux souterraines et de l'ignorance de différentes stratégies d'adaptation privés au défi des changements climatiques posent aujourd'hui des questions cruciales en termes d'adaptabilité des systèmes de production irrigués et constituent des défis majeurs beaucoup plus difficiles à gérer (Jeder et al, 2013). L'impact de ces évènements sur l'agriculture irriguée est en effet multiforme (Frija et al, 2016 ;Mahdhi et al, 2016). Il pèse sur les ressources en eau souterraine (épuisement et salinité), sur les personnes, sur l'augmentation des besoins d'irrigation, sur le capital des exploitations et sur les résultats de ces dernières (systèmes d'élevage et de culture moins productifs), mais également sur les rapports sociaux au sein des sociétés, qui sont mis à mal, le tout contribuant à accroître la vulnérabilité en particulier des petites exploitations familiales, qui ont des capacités limités pour s'adapter.…”

How to Improve Water Usage Efficiency? Characterization of Family Farms in A Semi-Arid Area

“…Similar methodological approaches have been used in the literature to classify farms [40,41]. Some studies are based on adaptation to water scarcity [15,20,42], but there is a lack of research on water usage efficiency. Table 2 presents a brief description of the main variables measured in the study in order to provide a profile of the family farms.…”

“…Both the common characteristics within each group and the differences between the groups with a one-way ANOVA analysis are then studied. Similar methodological approaches have been used in the literature to classify farms based on adaptation to water scarcity [15,20,25], but it should be highlighted that this study is the first to do it based on water usage efficiency.…”

Overlapping Groundwater Service Markets in a Palm Grove in the Algerian Sahara

“…Groundwater is often believed to only be exploited by farmers through individual private wells and tube‐wells (Margat and Van der Gun, ) as farmers sought to become independent from ‘state' or ‘community' controlled access to water (Kuper et al ., ). Yet, in many cases, collective organizations developed around the exploitation of groundwater at the initiative of the state or of the farming communities themselves (Schlager, ; Rica et al ., ; Frija et al ., ). In some cases, formal and informal institutions were also set up to manage groundwater (Llamas and Custodio, ).…”