Author details

of market incentive for farmers and can be used to promote specific agricultural

In this chapter, we used an agricultural supply model to simulate the effect of water scarcity on agricultural production in Tunisia. We simulated three scenarios related to (i) cutting irrigation water availability, (ii) cutting irrigation water availability accompanied by relative improvement of irrigation water use efficiency, and (iii) scenario 2 in addition to enhanced producer prices for farmers. Results were overall showing that mitigating a shortage of irrigation water in Tunisia is possible through readjustment of irrigated and rain-fed areas and better allocation of crops among regions and systems (irrigated vs. rain-fed). Results also show that the best scenario which has a significant effect on agricultural value added is the third one. Under this scenario, agricultural employment in the overall agricultural sector can even increase. We strongly recommend that the "national agricultural map" already developed by the Tunisian government could be revised using further socioeconomic data and applied for an optimal allocation of crop areas across the country. We further recommend that more work should be done on better

performing the structure and the functioning of the strategic agri-food value chain in Tunisia, allowing better marketing margins for farmers which will thus be translated into higher adaptation capacities of farmers to climate change and water

This work was undertaken as part of, and funded by, the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by the IFPRI. Authors acknowledge the support of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. The data used in this work was collected in the framework of the "Eau Virtuelle et Sécurité Alimentaire en Tunisie" project funded by the IRDC. The authors also acknowledge helpful funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 programme,

productions [43, 44].

Agricultural Economics - Current Issues

6. Conclusions

scarcity.

44

Acknowledgements

under Faster project, grant agreement N°[810812].

Ali Chebil<sup>1</sup> \*, Aymen Frija<sup>2</sup> , Mariem Makhlouf<sup>3</sup> , Chokri Thabet<sup>4</sup> and Sihem Jebari<sup>1</sup>

1 National Institute for Research in Rural Engineering, Water and Forestry (INRGREF), Ariana, Tunisia

2 Agricultural Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry areas, ICARDA, Ariana, Tunisia

3 National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia, Tunis, Tunisia

4 Department of Economics and Rural Development, Higher Agricultural School of Chot Mariem, Sousse, Tunisia

\*Address all correspondence to: chebila@yahoo.es

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
