Water scarcity is a growing challenge to the governance of water resources and to multiple water uses. Dealing with water scarcity requires a better‐shared understanding of water supply and demand dynamics on the part of the different stakeholders who contribute to and/or suffer the consequences of water scarcity. This study highlights the importance of establishing a water accounting system for groundwater management in the B...

Despite the attention given to the water–energy–food nexus, there is little field evidence of how this plays out for irrigators. This article analyses the diversity of irrigation system configurations and their related water and energy use in semi‐arid Morocco, where groundwater‐fed and pressurized drip irrigation, although supposedly thrifty, is energy intensive. The analysis relying on hydraulic calculations and multiple lin...

The current focus on water saving in drip irrigation projects has stifled more classical engineering debates on the relevance of different irrigation techniques for specific field conditions. We show that these debates remain important by analysing a drip irrigation project implemented in a sprinkler irrigation district in north‐west Morocco. The objective is to understand the apparent paradox of a state‐promoted switch to dri...

Groundwater service markets are important and dynamic institutions that provide water to a wide range of farmers in many regions. However, these institutions represent arenas of complex and often antagonistic relations, which determine which farmers gain access to water and how. This study analyses the emergence and functioning of groundwater service markets from a historical perspective to advance the understanding of the rol...

The need for lasting returns on the large investment in state‐sponsored drip irrigation projects and the ambitious objectives aimed to achieve requires thorough and continuous assessment of the performance of irrigation systems in use. However, few studies have evaluated the performance of systems once they have been installed, leading to overestimation of actual drip irrigation performance. This study focuses on the Tadla Irr...

Drip irrigation has long been promoted as a promising way to meet today's world water, food and poverty challenges. In most scientific and policy documents, drip irrigation is framed as a technological innovation with definitive intrinsic characteristics—that of efficiency, productivity and modernity. Based on evidence from North and West Africa as well as South Asia, we show that there are multiple actors involved in shaping...

Irrigation systems have changed significantly in the last 50 years. Originally supplied by surface water, its farming systems depend increasingly on the massive use of groundwater through private tubewells. Withdrawals are currently leading to a general decrease in groundwater table levels which in the past caused waterlogging due to excess surface irrigation. This new context calls for the repositioning of the paradigm of the...

When large‐scale irrigation schemes were created, establishing viable, and closely supervised, medium‐sized family farms was considered essential to reap the benefits of state investments. This centralized development model was progressively dismantled, especially as farmers installed private tubewells relying less on surface water. Our aim is to analyse development pathways of family farms in the Tadla irrigation scheme (Moro...

The use of groundwater in irrigated agriculture is often regarded as an effective way of increasing farm productivity. However, the effects of differential access to groundwater by farmers have rarely been studied at the microeconomic scale, particularly the possibly negative effects of marginalization of small farmers. During the hydraulic crisis that has affected Algerian irrigation schemes since the 1980s, groundwater has b...

In many countries, farmers are turning to groundwater to make up for surface water scarcity and to deal with increasing water demand, even inside large‐scale irrigation schemes. In many situations, this leads to the mining of groundwater resources, which in turn threatens the sustainability of the farms that depend on this resource. The purpose of this study was to find ways to provide the necessary information to stakeholders...

This study aims to characterize water productivity in cattle farms facing severe water stress. Agricultural practices were monitored on six farms in a large‐scale Moroccan irrigation scheme. Results showed marked variability in forage yields, milk production and live weight gain. Mean forage biomass yields represented less than two‐thirds of their potential productivity. Alfalfa was the most common forage crop, and its yield w...

In Morocco, many farmers rely on groundwater for irrigation. Extensive groundwater exploitation along with the recent droughts, have led to over‐exploitation of this resource. We argue that state regulation is necessary but insufficient to manage groundwater. This article determines farmers' strategies in the exploitation of groundwater and explores the perceptions of farmers of the functioning of aquifers and the use of groun...

The international debate on participatory management and irrigation management transfer has mainly focused on ex‐ante / ex‐post evaluations that rely on quantitative performance indicators to measure the failure or success of management transfer and the functioning of water users' associations (WUAs). This article focuses on the appropriation by farmers of state‐initiated WUAs illustrated by the case of the Moyen Sebou irrigat...