A decision support tool to enhance agricultural growth in the Mékrou River Basin (West Africa)

In the context of the Mékrou transboundary river basin project (basin shared among Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger), the E-NEXUS open software Decision Support System (DSS) was developed and applied in order to support the Water Energy Food Ecosystem (WEFE) nexus assessment providing to local managers optimal management solutions at river basin level to enhance food crop production. Agricultural is the primary sector for local economy in the region and it has a dominant contribution to income generation and employment creation. Increasing the agricultural productivity of the region requires the intensification of farming practices by augmenting additional inputs use (mainly nutrient fertilizer and water irrigation) but also a more efficient allocation of agricultural cropland. The DSS integrates several tools in order to cope with heterogeneity of data, analysis and issue linked with WEFE nexus approach such as the EPIC biophysical agricultural model, the SWAT hydrological model, a simplified regression metamodel and multi objective routine based in linear programming methods for the implementation of tradeoff analyses. Main features of the DSS are analyzed in this paper by applying the tool for several scenario analysis in the Mékrou river basin, where the results show how the increase of fertilizer and irrigation application, and their optimal allocation to different region and crops would allow to reduce missing food availability (unfeasibility from local production) by 35% and to increase at the same time the total income for farming sector of about +105%. The combination of optimal agricultural strategies with modified optimal cropland allocation across the basin would allow a further reduction of food unfeasibility ranging between 12-15% depending on different constraints and an increase of the total agricultural income of about +20-40%. The software framework proved to be effective enabling decision makers to identify efficient site-specific agronomic management practices for nutrient and water in order to increase the production and to cope with increasing food demand and completion for natural resources coming from other sectors (livestock, urban, energy).

UDIAS MOINELO Angel;  PASTORI Marco;  DONDEYNAZ Celine;  CARMONA MORENO Cesar;  ALI Abdou;  CATTANEO Luigi;  CANO Javier; 

2018-10-09

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC110346

0168-1699 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168169918302734?via%3Dihub,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC110346,   

10.1016/j.compag.2018.09.037 (online),