Economic Analysis of an Optimized Irrigation System: Case of Sant’ Arcangelo, Southern Italy

Abstract

Owing to its climate diversity and abundant natural resources, the Mediterranean basin is considered one the greatest areas for agricultural activities. Although, the Mediterranean agriculture plays an important role in the economic development of several countries by providing food and raw material for industrialization, it confronts a number of issues amongst them, water scarcity that has been increasing as a results of climate change affecting the seasonal fluctuation of rainfalls, and  anthropogenic impact delineated by overexploitation and pollution. Accordingly, targeting the most efficient water use is crucial to sustain economically important irrigated crops under the mentioned circumstances. In this paper, we tried to ensure an optimal and sustainable productivity for farmers by analysing different scenarios in order to achieve the most suitable decision that fulfils the desired goals in terms of efficient water use. This analysis is performed with the software GAMS (General Algebraic Modeling System), which is a static and non-linear optimization model. It allows from intergrating different data to reach a maximizing farmer’s utility that gives the optimal cropping pattern close to the real one. Considering several possible constraints and by using an optimisation software (GAMS), we obtained the optimal cropping pattern giving the maximum profit to the farmers within the study area of Sant’ Arcangelo.