Spanish farmers modernize water control

Fantastic Article in a newspaper in South Carolina, The State, about how Spanish farmers are leaving behind the traditional Moorish irrigation methods.

VALENCIA, Spain --
The Moorish invaders who once ruled Spain brought with them a clever irrigation system that helped turn arid land into verdant fields. A millennium later it is still largely in use, and Spain remains one of Europe's breadbaskets.

But after years of chronic drought coupled with vastly increased water use, not to mention worrying climatic change, farm groups have realized it's high time for change.

Spain's federation of irrigators, known as Fenacore, is promoting an initiative to computerize Spain's irrigation system by 2010, connecting some 500,000 farmers to an irrigation network headquartered outside Madrid.

The scheme should allow valuable water to be monitored and controlled by computer, drop by precious drop.

"We're jumping from the 13th century to the 21st century," said Juan Valero, Fenacore's secretary general.

While computer-assisted irrigation is not new, Fenacore believes no other country is organizing it at a national level. So far 200,000 farmers have signed up for the project, Valero said.

"The only way to manage water is to measure how much enters each channel, and computer technology is the best way to do this," he said.

Farmers are being encouraged to move away from outdated, wasteful Moorish-style flood irrigation systems toward drip and dispersion irrigation. They are also asked to lay highly efficient telecommunications cables alongside main water conduits so that the irrigation grid can be monitored from a national computer center.

"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 recently.

Fenacore estimates computerized irrigation will mean up to 20 percent water savings.