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- Title
Le marché foncier comme dispositif de réallocation de l'eau dans le périmètre irrigué de Guelma, Algérie.
- Authors
Assassi, Sami; Daoudi, Ali; Amokrane, Athmane
- Abstract
Irrigated land is scarce and, being more productive that rainfed land, it is crucial for food security in many developing countries for which extending irrigation is of strategic importance. In Algeria, and more generally in the Maghreb, this choice has long resulted in the building of large irrigated schemes. In these schemes, water availability is not sufficient to cover the demands and water is managed by a rationing system based on water turns, which reduces the quantities allocated to each farm to levels that limit their productive choices. In the irrigated scheme of Guelma, however, a third of the area is devoted, each year, to the cultivation of high-value crops, particularly tomatoes for industrial processing. To understand the mechanisms by which scarce water, theoretically accessible to all, and sold at a low administered price, is allocated to capital and water intensive crops, we conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with key informants, a directive survey with 30 tenants and 52 landowners in the irrigated scheme, and a spatial analysis of satellite images. Our results show that the development of intensive crops is largely linked to a dynamic market in which water and land transactions are connected. Through this market, the available water is reallocated between individuals and left, each year, to the highest bidders, namely the tenants specialized in tomatoes for industrial processing, who generate high added value. Tenants redistribute part of this value, via the land rent but also the residual fertility, to all wheat growers, whether landowners or tenants, dissuading them from claiming the water right linked to these plots.
- Subjects
ALGERIA; RESOURCE allocation; NATURAL resources
- Publication
Cahiers Agriculture, 2022, Vol 31, p1
- ISSN
1166-7699
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1051/cagri/2022028