* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
When we do not have rainwater, because we are in a context of drought, we resort to irrigation to keep our fields alive. But it is quite a challenge.
The image that we see in Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia situates us in the irrigation of the Lluçanès crops, where we can still see the green shine.
As detailed by the Generalitat, Catalonia is located in an area of Mediterranean agriculture, where rainfall is characterized by its irregularity, ranging between 300 and 700 mm per year in most of the territory, and summers are dry and hot.
For this reason, throughout Catalonia and especially in the semi-arid lands of the central depression and the coastal strip where potential evaporation in some points can reach almost 1,000 mm per year, peasants have historically struggled to have irrigation water to make their crops profitable. farms and fight against the periodic droughts.
Catalonia has a total area of 3,210,820 ha, of which 1,162,120 ha are useful agricultural area (UAA).
Since always, but especially since the second half of the 19th century, works to regulate and divert river water have been proposed in order to have greater irrigation guarantees.
Currently, the water for irrigation basically comes from reservoirs, greatly affected by the drought this spring, located in the rivers of the internal basins of Catalonia or in those of the Ebro basin, which is subsequently distributed through canals and ditches .
The irrigation infrastructure network makes it possible to irrigate some 340,000 ha in which a prosperous agriculture has been developed and, at the same time, closely linked to very important livestock farming. In addition, the abandonment of the fields and desertification are avoided in many areas of Catalonia.
