On 19 September, a workshop for companies on the digitalisation of irrigation took place in San Fernando de Henares, in the framework of the Smart Green Water project.
The event was hosted by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in its facilities of the National Centre for Irrigation Technology (CENTER).
The day began with a presentation of part of the centre’s activity by La Vega Innova, a public agricultural project, whose tender was awarded to Telefónica, and whose objective is to help startups, experts, researchers and investors in their search for solutions to the problems and challenges of the sector, providing them with tools such as agrotech applications, running workshops and seminars, making test spaces and laboratories available to users and offering acceleration and development programmes for innovative ideas, among others.
After the presentation, the committees reserved for partners and associates of the Smart Green Water project took place, in which the progress of the different activities was discussed and the official communication channels of the project and the monitoring and organisational tools to ensure internal cohesion were presented.
At the end of the committees, the programme of the Workshop with companies on the digitalisation of irrigation began with a presentation of the Smart Green Water project by Xavier Bernard-Sans, Secretary General of the Euroregion Pyrenees-Mediterranean, leader of the project, who highlighted the importance of the project and its objectives in order to create a resilient agriculture that can adapt to climate change, which particularly affects the Mediterranean area. This was followed by a presentation by Gema del Río from the Union of Small Farmers and Stockbreeders (UPA), a key partner in the project, who presented the results of the surveys of farmers in Spain, Portugal and the south of France, carried out with the help of the other partners. These results show that some farmers have little technological knowledge and that the cost of implementation is ultimately the factor that holds them back the most. And although there are existing subsidies that are an important element for farmers to transform irrigation, many farmers would like to have a tool to guide them towards adapted and better structured solutions. It should not be forgotten that there are major territorial differences between the regions involved in the Smart Green Water project, both in terms of the type of crops grown and the coverage available in rural areas, which is too poor to allow the implementation of irrigation technologies. All this generates mistrust among farmers towards the digitisation of irrigation, who also wonder about the usefulness of the huge amount of information collected by these technologies.
The Smart Green Water project then takes on its full meaning, as it will provide, among other modules, a platform that will help the farmer to choose between the different existing solutions to respond to specific irrigation needs.
After the presentation of the questionnaire to the farmers, a discussion started with the digitalisation companies specialised in irrigation, who highlighted the lack of irrigation management plans at farm level and the role that irrigation communities, regulations and state aid accompanied by the implementation of infrastructures can play in this case to convince farmers, all in order to guarantee the future of irrigation in the face of climate change.
The workshop concluded with an introduction to the history, objectives and facilities of the National Centre for Irrigation Technology (CENTER) by its Director, Carlos Garrido, who presented the tasks carried out by the centre: improving water and energy management and promoting the use of data in agriculture through technological solutions such as automation and digitalisation. He stressed that the modernisation and digitalisation projects of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are a priority, as is the case of the CENTER itself, the adoption of new technologies in the BIM methodology (such as the use of drones in the management of irrigation infrastructure maintenance), the creation of various technological solutions (meters, flow meters, SCADA monitoring systems, motorised gates, etc.), the Geoportal (a tool with cartography related to the protection of natural heritage, the sea, water, biodiversity, rural development, agricultural, livestock, fishing and food resources, among others) or the SIAR (agro-climatic information system for irrigation: a network of more than 500 weather stations throughout Spain, which includes a mobile application, measures temperature, water and wind, and provides information to the irrigation sector by combining satellite images).