The Minister of Agriculture will inaugurate the XIV National Congress of Irrigators in Alicante

The Minister of Agriculture, Isabel García Tejerina, will be in charge of inaugurating the XIV edition of the National Congress of Irrigators’ Communities, whose objective is to analyze the current situation of irrigated agriculture within a context marked by negotiations to reach the National Agreement of the water.

In this way, this forum, which will be held in Torrevieja (Alicante) organized by Fenacore and the Irrigation Irrigation Community of Levante Margen Derecha, will serve as a meeting point for more than a thousand farmers throughout Spain at a time when ensure the collection and supply of a scarce resource such as water requires a political agreement that ensures a stable long-term horizon to meet all demands.

Faced with this reality, the National Congress of Irrigators will focus the debate on three major issues. First, the role of regulatory works in a climate change environment, where it is necessary to control the damage caused by rains that although spaced out over time become more torrential, but also have guaranteed water in periods of drought, so typical of the Spanish climate.

In fact, having guaranteed water to irrigate is one of the factors that the irrigators consider essential to be able to amortize the more than 5,000 million euros invested to date in the transformation of irrigation through the formula of public-private collaboration. Thus, the second major issue that will be put on the table will be the need to increase public financing of modernization.

Raise European funds for modernization

In this way, before the imminent presentation by Tejerina of the National Irrigation Strategy 2018-2025, irrigators will address the feasibility of raising European funds (EAFRD) for irrigation modernization, given the limited budget they currently have the Rural Development Plans for this item.

In this case, the formula implemented in Castilla y León will be analyzed as an example of success, where the financial effort of the Ministry of Agriculture – managed through the State Agricultural Infrastructure Corporation (SEIASA) – has been supported by the Ministry of Agriculture. Agriculture and Livestock of the Board, allowing irrigators to face close to 30% of financing instead of 50%. An agreement that will serve to open the debate on the need to apply the same criteria throughout the national territory and tend towards more favorable formulas for users.

This financial improvement would also help to alleviate the weight of the exorbitant energy costs borne by irrigators precisely as a result of modernization, a workhorse with which they have been dealing since the special tariffs disappeared in 2008 to cover the tariff deficit. With modern systems, water consumption is reduced by 20%, but energy demand goes up, from an average consumption of 200 kilowatt hours per hectare to more than 1,500 kWh / ha and causing the electricity bill to be expensive in the last ten years more than 100%.

In this sense, although recently it was obtained at the request of Fenacore to respond to a historical demand, such as the possibility of having two contracts in the same year with different powers – one in season for the months of maximum consumption and another with a power minimum the rest of the year for the maintenance of the equipment – complementary measures are needed to compensate the more than 700 million euros of extra cost for the sector.

The leap to electronic administration

Finally, the third topic that will be addressed in the Congress will be water governance. Just as they modernize their irrigation systems, irrigators must also face a transformation of their administrative management systems to adapt to the digital environment that is currently imposed. Hence, the transition to electronic administration is also a matter of debate.

In this way, this forum will highlight, in particular, how to support and guide the irrigators when updating the ordinances to include the rules for good governance, transparency and access to information, including the novelties introduced by the new Law of Protection of Data, especially in relation to the figure of the Delegate for Data Protection.

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