Abstract
The chapter considers the detailed water balance related to food needs of Tunisia. The water footprint of agricultural production, including rainfed crop production, irrigated agriculture and animal production is estimated on average at 12 km3/year. Overall, the green water contribution, including rangelands, represents three quarters of the agricultural production. The remaining corresponds for a half to blue water footprint associated to irrigation and for the rest to virtual water imports embedded in fodder and cereals for livestock production. Assessment of virtual water fluxes associated with food products trade shows that virtual water imports has increased significantly in recent decades going from less than 2 km3/year to more than 8 km3/year from 1970 to 2000. Simultaneously, virtual water exports have doubled, from 1 km3/year to over 2 km3/year. Green water share represents more than 75% of the virtual water exports, and the share of BW represents 12%, more than half of which from dates exports. The virtual water coverage ratio, (exports to imports), has gradually deteriorated, from 80% in the early 1970s to 30% in the late 2000s.
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Notes
- 1.
Daily rainfall series from DGRE databases, kindly communicated to the author by H. L. Frigui, then Director of the hydrology department, September, 2012.
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Besbes, M., Chahed, J., Hamdane, A. (2019). The Holistic Water Balance: Blue Water, Green Water and Virtual Water. In: National Water Security. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75499-4_7
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