Catalonia accumulates 30 months of drought. There is a lack of water and the weather forecasts are not good. This spring it doesn't look like it's going to rain enough. The irrigation campaign has started in Pla d'Urgell with half the water that will be needed, which has made it necessary to impose restrictions of 40%.
Farmers are consequently planting winter grains instead of corn and other spring and summer crops that require more water. This summer, more than half of the agricultural surface of this region in the great central depression will produce winter cereals. There will be no second harvests, as would be normal, while legumes, vegetables and sweet fruit will be greatly affected.
Catalonia imports 60% of the food it consumes, and if the Pla d'Urgell does not reach the expected production, it will still have to import more.
Of the 40% that does produce, more than half (57.5%) comes from Lleida. Lack of water, however, will reduce this production. The prices of legumes, vegetables, tubers, olives and sweet fruit will therefore continue to rise. 16.6% have already done so.
The situation is critical and pessimism prevailed in mid-March in the 150th edition of the agricultural fair of Sant Josep in Mollerussa, one of the most important in Europe.
Farmers are very clear that they are facing a more severe drought than in 2008 and 2009. So it rained a lot in spring. Now, however, the forecasts are not good. Both Aemet and Meteocat anticipate that, at best, it will rain above average, not above as needed to recover the swamps.
The irrigation campaign started on March 20 in the Urgell auxiliary canal, which collects water from the Noguera Pallaresa river, and on Monday 27 in the main canal, which is fed by the Segre.
An irrigation campaign in Pla d'Urgell consumes 660 hm3 and this starts with only 345 hm3. Still, 345 hm3 is a lot of water. Nobody manages so much in Catalonia. The Ter-Llobregat system, for example, which provides drink to almost six million people, including the entire metropolitan area of Barcelona, with its corresponding industries, has an annual endowment of 250 hm3.
The snow in the Pyrenees should help alleviate the deficit, but this year it will hardly do so. By mid-March, most of it had already melted. The thaw has been brought forward two months. Today it is as if we were in the middle of May, with barely 100 hm3 of water in the form of snow.
That it does not rain is not new. Droughts are cyclical, and if they are more noticeable now, it is largely because water consumption has increased. Joaquim Bellvert, a researcher at IRTA, the Institute for Agrifood Research and Technologies of Catalonia, explained at the last Reg i Futur conference held in Mollerussa that in 2022 water needs increased by 14%, that is, 83 hm3. They are equivalent to the capacity of the Oliana reservoir, one of the four that regulates the water that flows down from the Pyrenees to the lands irrigated by the Urgell channels. There are some 70,000 hectares, which is equivalent to 76% of the irrigated land in Catalonia.
The Generalitat has been aware of the problem of lack of water for at least 20 years. Bellvert has recovered a study from the Generalitat itself from 2002 in which he already assured that the climate crisis was going to eat up 20% of Catalonia's water resources.
The geographer Ignasi Aldomà, one of the leading experts in agriculture and water management in Catalonia, considers that "Catalonia's strategic operation is to guarantee water along the entire coast", something that has not been done.
The passage of time and studies confirm the scenario of drought that is affecting Catalonia and that forces water consumption to be halved in the coastal area, where the bulk of the population lives. The reserves of the Ter-Llobregat system are at 27%.
The Urgell canals could use less water, but this hydraulic work, the most important in Europe in the 19th century, has hardly been modernized since it came into operation in 1862. 81% of the plots are still irrigated by blanket, that is to say , due to flooding, despite the fact that the efficiency of this type of irrigation is only 60%.
Xavier Díaz, general director of the General Community of Regants dels Canals d'Urgell, presented at the last Reg i Futur conference a modernization plan that will replace blanket irrigation with sprinklers and drip, which have an efficiency of more than 90% . When the work is completed within approximately a decade and at a cost of 1,420 million euros, it will be possible to save about 200 hm3 in each irrigation campaign, almost a third of what is currently used.
The modernization of the Urgell was proposed decades ago, but the administration preferred to expand the irrigation area by building another canal, the Segarra-Garrigues, a project that cost some 2,000 million euros, almost double what was budgeted in 2003. Furthermore, until In 2030 it is not expected to irrigate the 70,000 hectares assigned to it.
Food production needs water, a scarce commodity that is becoming more expensive every day. Water for agricultural use in the Urgell canals fluctuates between 0.01 and 0.03 euros per hectare, a price that will at least double after modernization.
This forces farmers to plant products with higher added value, such as persimmons, pomegranates, kiwis and pistachios. Smaller, less well-off owners who cannot afford this crop change will have a harder time earning a living.
Aldomà warns that the irrigable lands are very divided up and that the owners have them very dispersed. Concentration, as seen at Segarra-Garrigues, is very complex. “It is almost impossible to consolidate larger and more homogeneous farms”, he affirms.
Aldomà proposes "alternative land consolidation systems to reduce the initial cost and the operating cost that modernization will entail". The goal is to preserve the current ownership of the land because the more owners there are, the more social cohesion there will be.
A land concentration for the benefit of large companies will ruin the social fabric of the Urgell irrigation area. These companies will be able to irrigate the 70,000 hectares with 450 pivots of about 400 meters long each. Pivots are tubular structures on wheels for sprinkler irrigation.
The incentives of the administration, until now, have not been enough to convince some farmers without many years ahead of them or descendants who want to work in the fields.
“Many irrigators – admits Aldomà – are not interested. The intervention of the public sector is necessary and, in addition, everyone must be involved, taking into account that agriculture only employs 8.7% of the workforce in Pla d'Urgell".
Aldomà sees an alliance with local cooperatives and associations as essential, as well as with environmental groups. "The modernization of the Urgell - he concludes - is the last opportunity we have to maintain the DNA of the current irrigation community".
