GIS-Based approach to estimate the energy requirements of the post-harvest activities in Souss-Massa basin in Morocco

Abstract: Over the last decades the Moroccan agriculture has passed through a complete transformation: due to the low workforce cost and its favourable climate, the sector has attracted the attentions of national and foreign investment and thus has expanded rapidly. Among the different productions, tomatoes proved to be one of the most profitable, generating 4.867 billion dirhams in 2016 from exports. In order to remain competitive and attractive, the sector needs to be constantly monitored and controlled: abuses of the environment and of available resources may affect or even compromise the future of the Moroccan agriculture. Energy in particular has a remarkable role and has to be analysed in order to quantify its impact over costs and environment. The aim of this study is to build a GIS-based model of tomato’s postharvest system and study the agriculture and energy nexus interactions in the Souss-Massa region. Post harvesting activities such as: Transportation, conditioning, packaging, storing and transformation of tomato, occurs within Souss-Massa’s geographical boundaries and have been the focus of in this study. Results of current system highlight the dominance of packaging activity as the main energy consumer with 77%, followed by storing, transportation and transformation with 14 %, 6% and 3% respectively. In terms of cost the transportation becomes the most relevant activity due to the cost of fuels and transport conditions. Energy costs and wastes in transportation represent 15% of the local revenues (9% Transportation, 5% Packaging and 1% Storing). Four different scenarios about the future situation have been implemented to measure the possible impact of changes in the different activities: Business as Usual (BAU), Transport Efficiency (TE), Waste Reduction (WR) and Renewable Penetration (RP). -3- In BAU current trends have been followed to forecast the total production, the export and the power generation. In TE trucks with bigger capacity have been implemented and in WR refrigeration is considered in every transport stage. Finally, in RP higher renewable penetration has been considered