Water management in agriculture platform 2030 - 2050

Executive Summary

Producing more food for a growing population, the increase in competition for water resources among economic sectors, and the effects of climate change on agriculture, represent a future with greater restrictions on the availability of water in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries.

Faced with this complex outlook, progress in knowledge for irrigation management and technological developments in recent decades, represent a path to improving water use efficiency and agricultural productivity.

To effectively address these these challenges, researchers specializing in irrigation of the main agricultural institutions of FONTAGRO LAC countries, established an international network called the Platform for Irrigation Management for Agriculture 2030-2050, led by INIA (Chile), INTA (Argentina), INIA (Uruguay), INIA (Spain) and the CSIC (Spain), in partnership with public and private agencies. This Platform will execute actions aimed at the modernization of technological tools for the efficient use of water resources in agriculture.

The Platform is presenting a Consensual Project to the funding body FONTAGRO, which includes initiatives in four countries in Latin America (Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Uruguay) and Spain. Technological pilots studies will be implemented in these countries for the validation and transfer of new technologies. The general objective of the project is to evaluate and transfer a wide range of new technologies to end users, using R + D + I alliances between research centers and private agencies, thereby reducing existing technological gaps in irrigation management.

The technological solutions to be implemented in the pilots will be varied and at different scales. An emphasis will be placed on robust technologies that, in the long term, lay the foundations for precision agriculture. 

The technological solution

- Defining the irrigation needs of crops.

- Monitoring crop development.

- Monitoring the internal water status of crops.

- Monitoring soil water availability.

- Modeling soil water balance

- Modeling of water supply and demand in pilot regions

- Registration and control of water resources at regional scales and irrigation at the farm scale.

Results

Beneficiaries

Direct and indirect beneficiaries will include: farmers, professionals, advisors, transferees, who will be trained in the use of new technologies for irrigation. Likewise, the R+D+i groups of regional public institutions, particularly (but not exclusively) those of the INIA System of Latin America Countries. Companies that produce, install and exploit new technologies to optimize water use in regional agriculture. Regional national governments which will be associated with the network, so that they can update their policies, introduce/adopt technologies, incentives and investments in light of the problems and solutions analyzed within the network. Irrigators and their institutions, who will be involved in the network from the beginning, sharing their challenges and solutions with the rest of the project participants from other countries in the region.

Main donors