Water storage for date farm, Tunisia

Project info

During the past decade, a co-operative of date farms in Southern Tunisia has bought dozens of NPI water tanks for the irrigation of date palms. Around 70 water tanks have found their way to this desolate area in the Northern Sahara. In the early 1970s, an enormous underground aquifer was discovered in this part of Tunisia. In the years that followed, several oases were created to develop agriculture in this area. A strip of 2,500 hectares of crops including (date) palms was created along the border with Algeria.

The crops and thousands of palm trees are irrigated using a sophisticated system fed by the central water storage, which consists of dozens of metal water tanks. Relatively low tanks with a wide diameter were chosen. Provided that there is no shortage of space, low tanks with a wide diameter are often preferred. The installation of low tanks is simpler and also simply more attractive in cost terms. The approx. 70 water tanks allow the production of around 20,000 tonnes of dates annually.