The Community of Regants de l’Esquerra of the Ebro delta is developing a pilot test of salt water drainage in 60 hectares of rice fields that should serve to reduce irrigation consumption, help combat pests such as the apple snail and diversify current crops .
Salinization is one of the most serious problems faced by farmers in the Ebro delta, where many areas are practically at the same level as a sea that continues to rise.
With the deployment of a ten-kilometer network of pipes, the salt water that filters through the subsoil will be evacuated to a well and will subsequently be poured into the drains. This should not only improve the yield of rice fields, but also be able to introduce new crops that were hitherto unviable.
“The Ebro delta is at a level very close to that of the sea. At less than one meter you already find water and that makes it salty. We want to remove it and leave it at a safe level so that it does not affect the countryside and whatever happens happens. go now: the salt reaches the highest,” says the agro-environmental engineer of the Irrigators’ Community, Salva Martí.
This presence of salt forces farmers to have to constantly “wash” with irrigation to prevent the effect of seawater from having a negative impact on the sowing and drastically limiting the growth of the rice plant.
Avoiding this salinization, irrigators assure, would allow finding a solution to many of the problems that agricultural activity must face in the natural space.
