Futureproof farming water management - FUTURE FARMING -
Water scarcity and droughts are an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon across the world and are becoming more common in the European Union (EU). This leads to water scarcity, which can have destabilizing effects on countries and regions. In the EU, agriculture represents 31% of total water use and is highly dependent on irrigation in many countries, which is expected to grow with increasing global warming. Water is the most important productivity driver in farming, therefore increasing water scarcity imposes great challenges for farming and threatens the future EU’s access to food. Precision farming technology is expected to significantly contribute to combating water scarcity while optimizing productivity. Currently, most farmers do not use measurement technology to determine the optimal timings, amounts and areas to irrigate their fields. This often leads to unnecessary water usage and local under- or over-irrigation and productivity loss.
The main goal of the project is to prepare the EU’s farming sector for the increasing occurrence of droughts and water scarcity by optimizing water usage through precision farming technology. A second objective is to enable farmers to future-proof their business model by increasing profitability and enabling sustainable farming practices. In this project we will deploy 450 sensors and enable 150 farmers to use technology with crop and soil models based on the latest scientific insights in different European countries during the farming season of 2023. The countries that are selected for the project are the most intense users of water for agriculture purposes. Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Romania and Greece account together for over 90% of the total water usage in the EU for agriculture. There will be particularly attention placed on stimulating the adoption of the solution after the project, such that significant contributions can be made to combating water scarcity in the EU in the future. Thus, FUTURE FARMING will help minimise the EU's vulnerability to drought and water scarcity, by providing the agricultural sector with optimised precision farming technology.
This will enable farmers to adapt and future-proof their business models, with increased profitability and sustainable farming practices, and will help them adapt to the effects of climate change, in line with the EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change. It will also contribute to the goals of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which addresses water scarcity and promotes sustainable water use in agriculture, including the key objective of fostering efficient management of natural resources such as water, soil and air, and the Water Framework Directive (WFD), that includes provisions for managing water scarcity and droughts, including through water efficiency measures. After the project's two-year core activity, the aim is to further encourage the adoption of irrigation management technology among farmers in the EU, with local partners monitoring and reporting annually on the results.