Ensuring Food Security Through Increasing Water Productivity and Cereal Yields Forecasting – A Case Study of Ouled Saleh Commune, Region Casablanca-Settat, Morocco

Abstract

By 2050, the world’s population may reach 9.1 billion, a 50% increase compared to 2000. To feed this growing population, food and agricultural systems will have to increase their productivity and deal with many challenges such as land and water shortage and degradation problems. In Morocco, agriculture is a key sector of the national economy, playing crucial social and economic roles and generating some negative externalities. Cereals are the dominant crops and their production fluctuates depending on weather conditions. Therefore, cereal yields forecasting is a major tool for decision making to ensure food security, which still relies heavily on cereal production. The present work is essentially oriented towards the study of: water productivity (WP) of rainfed wheat as an indicator of agricultural development related to water management; and winter soft wheat yields forecasting in the rural commune of Ouled Saleh, characterized by a semi-arid climate and limited water resources to satisfy crop growth requirements. The results indicated that WP is relatively low and has to be improved, and that there is a good agreement between predicted and observed soft wheat yields using AquaCrop under rainfed conditions.