Irrigated Agriculture in Morocco: An Agent-Based Model of Adaptation and Decision Making Amid Increasingly Frequent Drought Events

Abstract:

In the past 100 years, Morocco has undertaken a heavy investment in developing water infrastructure that has led to a dramatic expansion of irrigated agriculture. Irrigated agriculture is the primary user of water in many arid countries, often accounting for 80-90% of total water usage. Irrigation is adopted by farmers not only because it leads to increased production, but also because it improves resilience to an uncertain climate.

However, the Mediterranean region as a whole has also seen an increase in the frequency and severity of drought events. These droughts have had a dramatic impact on farmer livelihoods and have led to a number of coping strategies, including the adoption or disadoption of irrigation. In this study, we use a record of the annual extent of irrigated agriculture in Morocco to model the effect of drought on the extent of irrigated agriculture.

Using an agent-based socioeconomic model, we seek to answer the following questions: 1) Do farmers expand irrigated agriculture in response to droughts? 2) Do drought events entail the removal of perennial crops like orchards? 3) Can we detect the retreat of irrigated agriculture in the more fragile watersheds of Morocco?

Understanding the determinants of irrigated crop expansion and contractions will help us understand how agro-ecological systems transition from 20th century paradigms of expansion of water supply to a 21st century paradigm of water use efficiency. The answers will become important as countries learn how to manage water in new climate regimes characterized by less reliable and available precipitation.