On summer mornings, the countryside awakes to the sound of its own rhythms. But this time it’s neither the trill of birds nor the buzzing of insects that sets the pattern for the day, but a constant humming of water headed for agriculture, flowing through the sluices, pipes and systems set up for irrigation.
This hum has become the real metronome for rural landscapes. Without water, you see, there’s no harvest; and without harvest, no food.
Yet today this heartbeat doesn’t just depend on rainfall or rivers. Part of the water that irrigates crops comes from the sea, once it has gone through a desalination process. Other water comes from cities, regenerated in a wastewater treatment plant. And yet more can be controlled in real time from a mobile phone opening or shutting sluice gates.
Water’s new journey to the fields is what defines farming in the 21st Century. Agriculture consumes almost 70% of the planet’s freshwater, to feed an ever-growing population, and, in a scenario of recurrent droughts, its journey needs to be reinvented for agriculture to remain viable.
What will I learn from this article?
In Cordoba, the El Picacho Irrigator Community has introduced a system to optimize water capture, storage, treatment and distribution. Part of this water comes from the regeneration process.
Re-use not only relieves pressure on aquifers and rivers, but transforms it from wastewater to a resource. Treated water thus acquires a second life: it returns to the fields enriched and ready to nourish crops.
In a context where demand is growing but availability lacking, this strategy allows every drop of the water cycle to be extended, reducing the pollution burden and strengthening the resilience of agricultural systems. The FAO itself advises that regenerated water is one of the best ways of supporting food security in times of hydric stress.
Treated water thus acquires a second life: it returns to the fields enriched and ready to nourish crops.
The Alhendín canal in Granada is the guardian of a century-old system of shared irrigation. Here, end-to-end infrastructure management takes in everything from a 4,000 m3 reservoir to a 200 kW solar photovoltaic plant that lowers costs and reduces emissions.
The irrigation community is much more than an administrative body. It’s a series of water governance “laboratories” for agriculture. Members of the farming community use these laboratories to try out formulas for cooperation, shared responsibility and sustainability, which inspire other sectors too. Their strength lies in managing water as a shared asset and not an individual resource.
When digitization, renewable energies and adequate funding are added into this ancestral logic, the result is a hybrid system: tradition and modernity being used together to guarantee water and food..
In the west of Almería, in southern Spain, a sea of plastic covers thousands of hectares of greenhouses. Here, one of the largest desalination plants in Europe, managed by ACCIONA, produces 97,200 m3 of water per day. It is enough to supply 300,000 inhabitants and water 8,000 hectares of crops.
Desalination has become a strategic piece of water puzzle for farmers. Its value is not only in transforming saltwater to freshwater, but offering a dependable supply, a guarantee against droughts, and stability in prices, reducing the vulnerability of the sector.
Thanks to innovations like advanced reverse osmosis and renewable energy use, these plants are becoming ever more efficient and a vital ally in ensuring the future of water in regions with a high demand from agriculture.
Precision agriculture is no longer a futuristic promise, but a palpable reality today. ACCIONA is implementing digital solutions that permit the real-time monitoring of both the quantity and quality of water for irrigating agriculture.
Soil humidity sensors, remote gate control systems, and weather data algorithms, have replace manual decision-making to meet water needs. The result is less water used and more productivity.
Digitization is not only efficient, it’s about transparency and professionalization. It allows irrigator communities to plan their needs, optimize fertilizers and reduce energy costs as a result of incorporating renewable sources.
Agriculture no longer has the luxury of depending on a single water source. Desalination, re-use, digitization, and shared governance, are the cornerstones of ensuring food security in times of climate change.
The challenge, more than technological, is cultural. It’s about understanding that every drop counts, that water has multiple lives and its management demands cooperation. Because our rural future – and that of our lunch table – depends on how we go about irrigating today.
Journalist and content manager specialising in sustainability. Trained at the Carlos III University of Madrid, she works at the intersection between the environmental, the human and the organisational from a conscious and committed point of view.
Her texts seek to provide clarity and perspective, integrating a critical, conscious and documented look at the challenges of the present.
Collaborates in
Sustainability for allSpecializing in
Climate change
Sustainability
Environment