The agricultural competitiveness of the Alqueva irrigation project under the 2003 CAP reform and the health check

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the competitiveness of the Alqueva irrigation project in the Alentejo region, southern Portugal. This project will create 110 thousand hectares of irrigated land in the region. The latest developments of Common Agricultural Policy in 2003 and 2009 and the Water Framework Directive guidelines could have negative impacts on the project competitiveness. The selection of representative farms was made using farmers interviews and multivariate methods. A multi-period mathematical programming model was developed to assess the farms competitiveness. The results show that the Common Agricultural Policy and the Water Framework Directive will have negative effects on farms. This can be overcome by the adoption of new technologies and more sustainable agricultural systems ensuring the future competitiveness of irrigated farms.