Boosting the productivity of smallholder farming systems continues to be a major need in Africa. Challenges relating to how to improve irrigation are multi‐factor and multisectoral, and they involve a broad range of actors who must interact to reach decisions collectively. We provide a systematic reflection on findings from the research project EAU4Food, which adopted a transdisciplinary approach to irrigation for food securit...

Groundwater irrigation is an opportunity to improve yield, but it also brings about a variety of environmental impacts that go beyond the most noticeable impact of water depletion. In this paper, a multi‐criteria environmental impact assessment based on life cycle analysis (LCA) is conducted at the regional level on the Kairouan Plain (Tunisia) where groundwater withdrawals for irrigation purposes are constantly increasing. At...

Most studies on the environmental performance of irrigation have focused on the water–food–energy nexus, i.e. relationships between food production, water consumption and energy. However, water and energy are not the only relevant indicators of the environmental performance of irrigation systems. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic method that is well suited to comprehensive assessment. This paper aims at using LCA to as...