Typology of irrigated districts of the Governorate of El Kef (north-west of Tunisia): A tool to diagnose and evaluate the performance of farms

The present work attempts to construct a typology of the irrigated perimeters (IP) of the Governorate of El Kef (northwestern Tunisia), identify groups of homogeneous perimeters based on a certain number of criteria, develop a powerful analysis tool for decision-makers and strengthen the credibility of intervention options. The typology is based on functional criteria which are the area allocated to cereals, vegetable crops, trees and fodder crops. The classification carried out using Saaty's AHP method made it possible to assess the weight vector of the entry criteria for 87 irrigated perimeters and to classify them. From this analysis, we identified four types of perimeters: the large and very diversified perimeters of class A, those moderately diversified of class B, the small perimeters with a monocultural system of class C and finally those of class D which are not farmed. The results from the typology using the AHP method of Saaty and another cartographic method show signs of similarity on the order of 93% and show that 2/3 of the IPs are considered globally as poor (monocultural system or not farmed), 29 are efficient (very diverse) and 7 are moderately diverse.

Keywords: Irrigation, El Kef, Typology, Saaty's AHP method, Mapping