In many developing countries where agricultural groundwater use led to aquifer overexploitation, direct control over farmers' groundwater use is difficult to implement. This calls for the setting up, at least in the short term, of indirect policies, the efficiency of which will depend on farmers' strategies. The different strategies adopted by farmers to cope with the groundwater crisis are analysed in the Chaouia region in Morocco, where intensive agricultural groundwater use for the past 50 years has led to seawater intrusion in the seashore part and falling groundwater levels further inland. First, strategies may be based on ‘chasing’ groundwater, by deepening boreholes, bringing fresh water in sufficient quantity to the farms or renting fields in areas with sufficient fresh groundwater, so as to maintain a water‐intensive farming system. Second, strategies that may be designated as adaptive, entail adapting the farming system to the water available on‐farm given existing hydraulic infrastructures. These strategies may be considered as more sustainable with regard to water resources. Most of analysed strategies were not at the same time economically and environmentally sustainable. Possible policies to achieve economically and environmentally sustainable activities differ not only in the difficulty of implementing them, but also in the types of farms likely to benefit from them. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.