The Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the president of the public company Seiasa signed the agreement for the execution of the 40 irrigation modernization actions contemplated in the second phase of the PRTR with a budget of 303 million euros.
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The Recovery Plan consigns a total of 563 million euros of public investment for works to improve the efficiency and sustainability of irrigation, which with private contributions will exceed 700 million until 2026.
Minister Planas highlights the Government's investment effort in the modernization of irrigation without historical precedents, with an injection of more than 2,100 million euros in the next five years that will allow the modernization of 200,000 hectares
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has pointed out that sustainable irrigation is key to facing the challenges of climate change in agriculture and to be able to maintain in the future the food production model that responds to the demand for the population.
For this reason, he has highlighted the Government's commitment to the modernization of irrigation, with a concentration of investments in the next five years of more than 2,100 million euros that has no historical precedent.
Luis Planas and the president of the State Agricultural Infrastructure Society (Seiasa), Francisco RodrÃguez Mulero, on July 21 signed the collaboration agreement for the execution of the second phase of the irrigation efficiency and sustainability improvement program included in the Recovery Transformation and Resilience (PRTR), with a public investment of 303 million euros that will finance a total of 40 actions in 15 autonomous communities.
The PRTR component managed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) has among its priorities the modernization of irrigation, a chapter to which it allocates 53.5% of its total budget.
Of the 563 million euros planned until 2026, 260 million euros were already included in the first phase to undertake 42 actions -the corresponding agreement was signed on June 25, 2021-. The beneficiary irrigation communities of the modernization will co-finance 20% of the actions.
The minister stressed that this package is part of the Government's firm and decisive commitment to sustainable irrigation, which is necessary to maintain a sufficient food production system in the future and in a scenario of less availability of water resources.
"We have the challenge of food sufficiency throughout the planet, and we have to respond in a scenario that requires us to face what is urgent without leaving behind what is necessary", he said and referred to the situation of climate change with extreme phenomena such as droughts or fires caused by high temperatures.
For this reason, he has assured that "it is necessary to make better use of water", and a "more modern and efficient" resource management system, which is sustainable. And to respond to this challenge, the Government is committed to improving the efficiency of irrigation.
In addition to the investments financed with European recovery funds, the irrigation modernization actions are completed with the ministry's own budgets.
Thus, in the next five years, investments of more than 2,100 million euros will be promoted, with an average of 420 million per year, when in the first 21 years of this century the investment was 150 million per year. These actions will modernize 200,000 hectares of irrigated land, which will benefit some 20,000 farmers.
"The modernization of irrigation, its digital transformation, with a more efficient, intelligent and sustainable use will contribute to the prosperity of the agricultural sector and is one of the great bets of the present and the future", stressed the minister.
The projects included in the agreement have been selected at the proposal of the autonomous communities, in accordance with the requirements of environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, and implementation of new technologies required by the European Union for the application of recovery funds.
Being financed with these, the works must be completed in the year 2026, so that in the selection of projects those with a greater degree of maturity have been considered, and that offer the real possibility of execution in a relatively short term.
Among other aspects, priority is given to issues such as the lower consumption of water resources, the substitution of surface and underground water for regenerated or salinized water, the incorporation of renewable energy that represents savings, or the installation of remote control meters and precision instruments in the irrigation system.
The selection of the projects has not been easy, the minister acknowledged, since the autonomous communities came to present more than 300 proposals for possible actions.
The Government has already announced that it is going to increase the provision of European funds for sustainable irrigation, to which 410 million of the 800 million in which the budget of the Strategic Project for the Recovery and Economic Transformation (PERTE) of the Agro-Food Sector has been increased .
Planas has reiterated that irrigation is a hallmark of the Spanish agri-food production system, which allows agricultural production to have reached the record figure of 56,400 million euros in 2021, or that exports maintain a line of constant growth with a value that in the mobile year to April will exceed 63,000 million euros.
Spain has the largest irrigated area in Europe, 3.8 million hectares, 54% of them with a localized system. Although irrigation barely represents 22.6% of the cultivated agricultural area in Spain, 65% of the final agricultural production is obtained from it. Irrigation multiplies agricultural productivity by six, increases farmers' income by up to four times and generates three times more employment per surface unit than dry land. ■