Toward Sustainable Water Resources Management in the Tunisian Citrus Sector: Impact of Pricing Policies on Water Resources Reallocation

This study aims to analyse Tunisian farmers’ ability to pay (ATP) in a citrus area and propose a penalising price strategy based on the block-pricing process to decrease over-irrigation without affecting farmers’ incomes. The methodology is based on the residual imputation approach to determine farm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Water (Basel) 2022-06, Vol.14 (11), p.1791
Main Authors: Ajroudi, Najla Hajbi, Dhehibi, Boubaker, Lasram, Asma, Dellagi, Hatem, Frija, Aymen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural production
Aquatic resources
ATP
China
Citrus
Citrus fruits
Elasticity of demand
Farmers
Irrigation
Irrigation water
Management
Price elasticity
Pricing
Pricing policies
Profits
Resource allocation
Stochasticity
Tunisia
Water
Water management
Water policy
Water resources
Water resources management
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Summary:This study aims to analyse Tunisian farmers’ ability to pay (ATP) in a citrus area and propose a penalising price strategy based on the block-pricing process to decrease over-irrigation without affecting farmers’ incomes. The methodology is based on the residual imputation approach to determine farmers’ ATP, a stochastic production frontier to estimate the technical efficiency to determine optimal water irrigation quantity and calculation of the price elasticity of demand for an effective penalty and the Gini index before and after penalisation to study equity improvement. A survey was carried out on a sample of 147 citrus farms in the Nabeul Governorate, Northeastern Tunisia. The technical efficiency analysis confirms that an optimal quantity of 5000 m3/ha guarantees the maximisation of yields and profits. Above this quantity, the amount of overused water could be penalised without significantly affecting farmers’ incomes. Results also reveal that water overconsumption represents 28% of available resources and the ATP varies according to technical efficiency. Therefore, the proposed penalty system could reduce water overconsumption by 44.56% without deteriorating agricultural welfare. To improve water management as well as farmers’ welfare, this study recommends an increase in the technical efficiency level of farms to optimise all production factors for any implemented pricing policy.
ISSN:2073-4441
2073-4441
DOI:10.3390/w14111791