Solving Tunisia’s sustainability Paradox through Integrated Value Chains

Tunisia’s agriculture faces a crossroads. With renewable water resources dropping below 500 m³ per person and rainfall expected to decline by 35% in the coming decades, every drop counts. Yet, inefficiency across the sector leads to staggering losses, approximately 470 million Tunisian Dinars and billions of liters of water are lost annually along the food value chain. ICARDA’s research, under the Water Scarcity Initiative Programme, points to a new path for resilience, showing how farmers can conserve water, and generate more value from every drop.

The Sustainability Paradox

It may appear straightforward: a drip irrigation system should be able to conserve water. However, widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technology such as drip systems without systemic planning can have unintended consequences, creating a sustainability paradox that threatens groundwater resources. After all, an enormous portion of Tunisia’s water (87%) is used for crop production.

In addition to the water required for irrigation, a substantial volume of water is embedded in produce that doesn’t even reach the consumer because of the losses that occur throughout the production process and subsequent handling. In other words, reducing food waste isn’t merely a matter of saving the physical produce, it is also a method of conserving the water that has been invested in the produce.

Tracking Water Use Across the Food Value chain

Water Footprint assessments reveal how much water is consumed across the entire food system, from crop and feed production to processing and consumption. It accounts for rainwater, irrigation from surface or groundwater, and the water needed to dilute pollution generated during production. By linking water use to economic outputs, it highlights where large volumes of water are tied to low returns and where efficiency gains are possible.

A review of water use within various value-chains shows that efficiency is determined by resource management throughout each step of the chain and not simply at the point of production. Each step from irrigation scheduling, processing techniques and input management will have a direct impact on the amount of water consumed and the economic outcome of the process. The cumulative effect of inefficiency at each step creates an overall significant impact which supports the position that agriculture is a system of interconnected processes rather than a set of isolated activities.

In the dairy sector for example, most water goes into feed production, accounting for 87% of the water footprint of milk. Inefficient irrigation and suboptimal feeding practices further amplify water consumption while reducing profitability. Olive oil production on the other hand tells a different story: both growing olives and processing the oil are the primary water users. It is in the extraction stage where the water uses differences become clear: traditional three-stage extraction processes use more water and produce more waste, while modern two-phase methods increase water productivity and improve product quality.

Pathways Towards water-efficient Value Chains

The way forward lies in institutionalizing integrated resource management through policies that link water productivity, food loss reduction, and value-chain performance. Tunisia must move beyond post-harvest metrics to system-wide diagnostics that connect production decisions, market signals, and climate variability in a way that uncovers systemic misalignments across the value chain, showing exactly where water, and economic resources are wasted even when food itself isn’t physically lost. 

Priority should be given to establishing coordination platforms between farms and processors, implementing scarcity-based water pricing, promoting water-efficient processing technologies, leveraging virtual water trade, and launching consumer awareness campaigns. These interventions could achieve up to 16% water productivity gains while reducing food loss.

Building on existing policies, leading to the allocation of water to low-productivity useslike the National Water Saving Program, Tunisia must fully integrate water footprint and virtual water accounting into national strategies to align crop production with water availability, favoring low water footprint exports like olive oil over water-intensive wheat imports.

Over time, similar analysis could inform efforts in other water-scarce contexts like jordan and Egypt.

Boubaker Dhehibi is an agricultural resource economist at ICARDA and a Principal Scientist in the Social, Economy, and Policies Team within the Resilient Agricultural Livelihoods Systems (RALS) program. He works on policy and partnership innovations to support inclusive and climate-resilient agrifood system transformation across Central and West Asia, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. His research spans technology adoption and impact assessment, climate change economics, natural resource management, applied micro-econometrics, and economic modelling. During the last 15 years, he has supported research projects in over 18 countries in North Africa, the Middle East, West Asia, and Arabian Peninsula. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Zaragoza, Spain (https://www.icarda.org/about-us/our-experts/boubaker-dhehibi).