Portugal is “well prepared to manage the drought”, but the state of the aquifers “is very worrying” | Water
The rains of March this winter should be compatible with the alarm predicted by the future drought, but that the future agriculture that we will have – and that we plan for the, with the predicted increase in irrigation – is with the irrigation scenarios. climate changeswhich points to an increase in water availability?
An audit by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), released in September 2021, warns that “European Union policies cannot guarantee that they use water in a sustainable way”. According to the report, “farmers benefit from numerous facilities to the EU’s water policy, hampering the exercises to ensure good use of water”. And the Union’s own agricultural policy “promotes and often supports more intensive rather than more efficient use of water”.
At a time when the design of the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) privileges the “economic, social and environmental sustainability of the European agri-food system”, and that in the new government of António Costa, the Ministry of Agriculture also became one of food and the time including fisheries, does Portugal see itself in this criticism? “More than seeing each other, we have to be attentive”, says minister Maria do Céu Antunes. “We managed to reform the PAC to include the financing of efficient management systems and this implies financing, as maintenance works for maintenance, the requalification of installation systems.”
But, he recognizes, it is also necessary to “monitor, evaluate and render accounts”. There, Portugal has work to do and delay to make up for. Who says this is Rodrigo Proença de Oliveira, author of a study considered fundamental and presented in December 2021, on current and future water availability in the country. “Portugal, in recent years, especially 1995 and 2000, has not invested as much as it can in monitoring water resources”, he says. “The monitoring network had a lot of malfunctions, so we may have a lot of data out of order. From 2015 onwards, things started to improve a bit, but still, we are monitoring less than we should.”
20 thousand new holes per year
This reality affects the ability to make estimates. “We are aware that our water availability estimates are not as good as they should be. And everything we know about water use in agriculture is by estimation.” The same problem arises at the species level. “As the agricultural sector is the biggest user [cerca de 70% do consumo de água é deste sector]obviously we are more concerned with the species existing in urban agriculture that have to be tackled.”
The minister guarantees, for her part, that the inspection takes place afterwards, “not least because the PAC is strict and all the support that is granted is supervised”. So far, she says, “there was a lot of information, but it was very dispersed”. A problem that, among other things, it intends to combat with the Single Agriculture Portal, a tool financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and “to which the farmer will have access to the Ministry of Agriculture, as happens, for example, between the citizen and the citizen Ministry of Finance”.
One of the “great challenges” regarding what is still needed to know is to know the species in the approximately 8% of irrigated lands that are private, a part of which “are individuals, do not have and, therefore, have a loss of efficiency. ”. In years of drought, the pressure increases. “I will give you a very impressive number”, announces José Pimenta Machado, vice-president of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA). “Every year we license more than 20,000 boreholes in Portugal and the requests for capture are always increasing. Therefore, we need to increase our ability to control, monitor and inspect the titles and as conditions we have to increase for what we want: a sustainable use of water.”
But probably the biggest challenge of all is for the greatest qualities. “Each aquifer is an aquifer and it is very difficult to assess its use”, explains Rodrigo Pronça de Oliveira. “To use as operation resources are needed, a use title is needed, but they are drilling an operation hole. It is very difficult to monitor these people. And that is one of the challenges in managing water resources: finding a way to monitor how much better we are using water resources.
“very worried about the same state. “Algarve aquifers this year are around 20% and are obviously a fundamental strategic reserve. establishment, drought does not recharge aquifers. And the same thing, although a little better, happens in the Tagus region, where levels are also very low.”
But, he warns, “you only manage what you measure” and “we have to train with instruments to protect better”.
a new moment
Efficiency is an order of order in the Ministry of Agriculture, as well as in the Environment – which, in the words of the vice-president of the APA, “live a new moment of cooperation, of articulation”. With more information, more technology that allows for greater inspection, investments in network recovery, greater water savings will be possible – and, with that, it will be possible to increase the irrigated area, defending those responsible. The study conceived as Rodrigo Proença de Oliveira is based on a model that will be updated, which serves as a starting point for all the
There is no doubt, however, that the path is to increase irrigated areas. “Agriculture that is resilient, that allows predictability and is competitive, that is able to retain people, that we do not have agriculture for soil conditions, that we do not have agriculture for soil conditions, we need to emphasize ministering”. This is only possible with water reserves, with an efficient distribution, that is, collective irrigation systems.
Greater availability can lead to large water products opting for crops that are consumers as a resource. This is one of the warnings released by the audit of the European Court of Auditors: “The modernization of existing irrigation systems does not always result in water savings either, as the water saved can be redirected to crops with a more intensive use or irrigation from another area. wider. Likewise, the installation of new infrastructure that expands the irrigated surface is likely to increase pressure on freshwater resources.”
In addition, the document also highlighted, “some payments [da PAC] support water crops (such as rice, with the use of nuts or nearby fruit and agricultural products, which means that they also affect areas under stress water”. Pimenta Machado considers that until now “the incentive system was in line with what was the most classic response, making new abstractions, boreholes, easy waters or building new dams.” But this path “to change, clearly”, is further towards greater efficiency. “In the last notices of the Rural Development Plan (PDR) 2020, as a condition of access to the system, [quem apresenta as candidaturas] must show that it will save at least 5% of water. This is very relevant.”
Greater diversification
Both Maria do Céu Antunes and José Pimenta Machado consider that the State is not the type of crop they should do, but that it administers the administration of rice fields to be able to give an explanation. “We are, curiously, one of the countries that consumes the most rice, we are far from being self-sufficient, but we have three basins, in the Sado, in the Mondego and a little bit in the Ria de Aveiro, which, if we do not use it to produce rice, we cannot produce more. anything. If rice is not produced there, there is a loss of biodiversity big,” he says. “You will tell me that water consumption is limited. Yes, but technically it is possible, for example, to reuse. From a public policy point of view, we have an obligation to work on this dimension.”
What public policy can do is encourage the choice of crops that promote greater diversification. “Just recently, we opened a notice for traditional cultures. What do we include? Carob in the Algarve, for example. We understand that it is essential and it is the sector itself that asks for it.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine also has an impact on agricultural policies – and the way water is managed. The issue of food self-supply is increasingly on the order of the day (in Portugal and elsewhere) when the “great granary of the world” is no longer able to produce the amount of cereal it used to produce until now. How is this need to be reconciled with the autonomy of farmers, who can opt for more profitable crops – such as oss in the Algarve – or essentially switch to agriculture?
Cereals have always been the Achilles heel of Portuguese agriculture. “We created support for the cereal sector”, recalls Maria do Céu Antunes. The issue has not been peaceful. The support arrived, but they hoped that this would not be done yet, because it happened. The minister promises that everything will come to fruition in 2023.
“Starting next year, the sector will be able to count on support aimed at increasing the national capacity to produce cereals”, he declares. “We currently produce 18% of the cereal we consume, the rest we basically import from France. We don’t have the capacity to be self-sufficient, but we can increase. The Cereals Strategy determined that we should go up to 38%, which is our self-provisioning capacity. We are going to give a financial incentive, either to farmers to increase bread-making cereals, or to be able to forage.”