The technical results obtained at the second agricultural season 2011-2012 are illustrated in the pictures below.
For the economic results, it is important to highlight the agricultural experience and expertise of the farmer which helped the pilot plot to realise good performances in terms of irrigation water use and economic revenue (20 to 30 kg tomato/m3 of water depending on the crop variety).
The good management of irrigation water resources is one of the factors that contributed to the realisation of these performances. In fact, irrigation was automatic and scheduled according to the climate context and the vegetative stage of crops based on solar power.
The daily average consumption of irrigation water is 100 m3 for the entire cultivated surface (12 000 m3/ha for the whole agricultural season) which represents the lowest consumption among all the intensive agricultural systems of the three SASS countries.
The exceptional technical and economic performances were presented to the participants in the first regional workshop held in Mednine on 5 June 2012 on the demonstration. Most of the participants showed satisfaction with the demonstration pilots including Libyan technicians and representatives who were particularly interested in the “Success story”.
The results obtained assert the efficiency of the use of desalinated water through a reasoned intensification of the agricultural system. In fact, the agricultural system of this pilot was more performant than the ones conducted by small farmers though it concerns the same agricultural system (conducted in greenhouses and irrigated with geothermal non-desalinated brackish water with all the problems related to the negative impacts of salinity on soil and crops on the one hand and the decline of revenue due to parasites and diseases on the other).
Despite the good performance of the hyper-intensive capitalist agricultural systems, many questions could be raised concerning:
- the conditions, structures, and perspectives of conducting this kind of production system by the farmers of the region who usually practice hyper-intensive geothermal agricultural systems;
- the environmental impacts associated with waste brine resulting from the water desalination operation;
- the sustainability of the agricultural systems in case of a loss of export markets and in a context where of the local market is incapable of ensuring a profitability that matches the high-value crop production.
