New varieties and crop changes. It is a recipe for local measures by scientists to face climate change in the face of a historic drought. The researcher of the Efficient use of water in agriculture program of the Agro-Food Research and Technology Institute (IRTA), Joan Girona, supporter of irrigation canals, and NarcÃs Prat, professor emeritus of Ecology at the University of Barcelona , critical of large infrastructures and agricultural overexploitation, agree on the need to change species and replace corn or alfalfa with early cereal and sunflower and open a deep debate on new crops.
Prat affirms that without questioning what is grown, the problem will not be solved. He insists that when the Segarra-Garrigues canal was built, it was already known that there was no water. “We have come to something we already knew, for many years no one has paid attention to the scientific reports, to everything that has been said. Many scientists have been told that we were everything, even terrorists,” says Prats, for whom the solution is now a sum of small solutions, such as regenerated water, more desalination, improvement of aquifers and savings.
In his report The Water Book for the then Ministry of Environment and Housing, he pointed out in 2009 that future warmer and drier conditions could compromise the structure of crops and that the irrigation sector would be the most affected , with increases in water demand due to greater evapotranspiration and the increase in irrigated hectares.
Having lost a large part of the cereal harvest, Agroassurance puts the number of hectares it will indemnify in Catalonia at 110,000, the highest figure in its 40 years of activity. “At this moment we need to save what we have, when this summer passes I hope that we will learn lessons and consider more resistant varieties and infrastructure improvements”, points out Girona. He is one of the researchers in the trial of irrigated almond trees that the Diputació de Lleida and IRTA planted on the corporation’s experimental farm in Maials with a minimum allocation of 2,000 cubic meters per hectare per year in 2003.
Now, with two irrigations guaranteed in the Canal d’Urgell and survival compromised, the recommendation in this area by the IRTA is to remove the largest number of fruits, or all, so that they do not consume water and, if necessary, to prune -the bear. Also bring forward the start-ups of the farms where the farmers had planned to do them in the next two or three years to renew varieties. “Many farmers will harvest all the fruit to save the trees”, Girona says.
In the case of fruit trees, Girona recommends planting smaller trees, not so much because of their resistance to drought but because of the lower demand for water. It is the trend shared by Ignasi Iglesias, technical director of the company Agromillora, with self-rooted almond trees, in dry conditions, with longer roots that can go deeper into the ground.
The Cebas-CSIC Genetic Improvement Group of Murcia, in which Federico Dicenta participates, has created an almond tree pattern for dry land, DryStock One, based on traditional knowledge of adaptation to dry land, with genetic and health guarantee.
The change to varieties with less water needs is also the alternative of the Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Alcalá de Henares Antonio Ruiz de Elvira, an expert in climate change who frequently participates in fruit growers’ forums. He explains that the fruit growing companies have not fully entered into this conversion of crops and, from his point of view, “there is not the interest” that the situation requires.
