On November 11 2021, the PROSIM project team went to the Governorate of Nabeul to visit the project’s intervention area in this region.

In Béni Khaled, we were able to share a morning with representatives of the local Agricultural Development Groups (GDA), the Regional Agricultural Development Commission (CRDA) of Nabeul and local farmers to discuss about their needs in terms of fresh water solutions, the specifications of the fields and crops and the activities that will be implemented by the PROSIM project in order to help them.

Local actors in Beni Khaled also expressed their concern about difficulties in developing their agricultural activities. In fact, the water from the boreholes has a salinity concentration that is too high for crop irrigation, requiring it to be mixed with fresh water. Unfortunately, there is less and less of it underground trigging  increasingly recurrent and lengthy shortages.

The PROSIM project, supported by the ENI CBC MED programme, plans to install sensors for irrigation scheduling to allow 40 local farmers to reduce water losses and groundwater pumping. Stationary sensors are small devices placed at the predetermined locations and depths in the field that will collect information about the temperature, amount of water and salinity of the soil at multiple depths. This technology enables farmers to know the exact amount of water needed to irrigate their meadows avoiding plant stress and over-exploitation of water sources for irrigation.