Spain’s Farmers Going Digital to Conserve Water

ALBERIQUE, Spain

For decades, Alberto Martorell and his family have been irrigating their rolling groves of orange and persimmon trees in this sweltering corner of eastern Spain by the traditional method – swamping them under a flood of water from the local canal.

But if a national farmers’ group has its way, those days will soon be over.

Martorell is one of a growing number of Spanish farmers who have signed up to go digital – agreeing to switch to drip irrigation and connect their fields to a national grid monitored from Madrid.

The idea is to save money and, equally important, precious water. Officials say the system could end up saving 20 percent of the water Spain uses for irrigation today – a whopping 1.3 trillion gallons per year. "We’re jumping from the 13th century to the 21st century," said Juan Valero, the secretary general of Spain’s irrigation farmers’ federation, called Fenacore.

While computer-assisted irrigation is not new, Spain believes that no other country is organizing it at a national level. So far 200,000 farmers have signed up for the project, Valero says. By 2010, they hope that number rises to 500,000, representing the vast majority of the irrigation farmers in Spain.

Valero said that years of chronic drought coupled with vastly increased water use has worn down resistance to the changes. The government is chipping in, paying all the costs of the system right up to where it reaches each farmers’ land.

Martorell, a stocky, sun-beaten 50-year-old, acknowledges that his main motivation for making the switch was money, not becoming part of any green revolution.

"The methods we have been using are obsolete," he said, standing amid a field of persimmon trees. "New technology allows you to save time, improve harvests and most importantly, save water."

His land’s irrigation system is in the process of being modernized, and he hopes to have it completed within three years.

Under the project, Fenacore is encouraging farmers not just to move away from wasteful flood irrigation systems, but also to lay highly efficient telecommunications cables alongside main water conduits.

The telecommunications cables will be connected to computer centers regionally and nationally from where the irrigation grid can be monitored, with screens showing which land is getting water, how much, when and at what pressure.

The endeavor represents a revolution in a country that is 50 percent arid. Spain tops Europe by devoting up to 70 percent of its water resources to irrigation.

But much of its system of channeling water from rivers is based on an intricate grid of open canals first developed by the Arabs after they invaded Spain in the 8th century.

Although many of the Arab-styled watering ditches have been replaced with closed concrete piping, many of the original open channels can still be seen crisscrossing the lush fields of southern and eastern Spain.

But these systems lose millions of gallons through evaporation, poor maintenance and run-off .

"In almost half of Spain, the irrigation technique used is flooding, which uses up to three or four times more than the water that is necessary," Environment Minister Cristina Narbona said .

Spain’s profligate water usage has long concerned experts and conservationists.

The country is estimated to lose more than 60 percent of its water before it reaches the tap, and only 1.5 percent is recycled.