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Oases around the world have undergone significant changes over the past 30 years. In different parts of North Africa for example, irrigated farms are increasing outside the ancient oases, on land previously reserved for extensive livestock farming. Studies of these extensions are relatively recent and have frequently analysed these dynamics from the perspective of economic, agricultural and water resource use, and framing them as processes of water and/or land grabbing. However, there are significant differences between the people who farm in the extensions and their farming practices. In this article we aim to account for the wide variety of farms, and to improve our understanding of these Saharan spaces. To this end, we use a case study of the Toudgha Valley in south-eastern Morocco, where we analyse the different trajectories of new landowners and their families who settled in the extensions. The results of a qualitative survey of 49 farms show three types of farms are involved. The first is a small farm people move to, to look for accommodation and work opportunities on other farms. The second is a medium-sized farm where farmers seek to reproduce three-layered cropping system and to access more land than in the ancient oases. The third type is a large farm where investors seek to intensify production. This typology, far from being fixed, allows us to reflect on the dynamics of these different extensions and their future.
