According to the World Resources Institute study of the United Nations Global Compact, a quarter of the world's population faces water stress, meaning that their demand for water is "extremely higher" than the amount available.
The water crisis is a situation that, in one way or another, affects the entire world. 17 of 164 countries are currently experiencing a complicated situation regarding the availability of water resources (extremely high water stress), while Chile is in 18th place in the World Resources Institute study of the United Nations Global Compact. This places it in first place among Latin American countries with the highest water stress. “high water stress”.
“The planet is covered by three quarters of water and the percentage that is usable for human use has dropped considerably. Every day that passes, fresh or usable water is scarcer. There are areas where we have a lot of water, but there are others that experience constant droughts and climate change basically means that this reality is beginning to multiply throughout the world. Mediterranean climates like ours, which are replicated in other parts of the world, today have this risk of becoming water scarce. Let us not forget what happened a few years ago in Cape Town, South Africa, where they were on the verge of running out of water for human consumption. And in the summer in our country, mainly in Santiago, the ghost of rationing or scarcity came upon us, which would be a complicated issue, not because it is Santiago, but because almost 10 million people live there.” explained Nicolas George-Nascimento, Sales & Marketing Manager Chile at Rivulis Irrigation.
Water is a fundamental element for life and food production, and due to population growth, its demand has also increased. According to the Office of Studies and Public Policies, ODEPA, in Chile the largest consumer of water is the agricultural sector (which is repeated worldwide), using 73% of the available resource, with which 902,158 hectares are irrigated (VIII National Agricultural and Forestry Census, agricultural year 2020 – 2021).
Faced with the growing population growth, which on November 15, 2022, according to the United Nations, reached 8,000,000,000 people on the planet, various questions arise regarding how to deal with the scarce availability of water and guarantee food security for the inhabitants of the earth. In this context, the use of technology is a great ally.
“If we consider the low availability of water resources, the use of this resource has to be much more efficient, it has to seek to increase efficiency to levels much higher than what we are used to today and that is where we come in as a company, as developers, in terms of seeking the greatest efficiency of water application in crops; let us not forget that agriculture is one of the sectors with the greatest use of water consumption and we have to make that use efficient, what we are basically looking for is the efficiency of application and use of water in agricultural crops in order to be able, in some way, with the same amount of water, to have greater production,” Nicolas George-Nascimento explained.
Rivulis, a world leader, has been working since 1966 providing complete drip irrigation solutions to the needs of growers, whether for individual operations or large corporate plantations in the agricultural, horticultural, greenhouse, and mining industries. They have a strong global presence, with 16 manufacturing plants and 3 research and development centers located in California, Greece and Israel; the latter country is a benchmark in managing water crisis problems.
“It is always said that there is a lack of water in Israel, but beyond whether there is a lack of water or not, they are experts in managing water; half of the country has water and the other half is a desert, the truth is that they have made it much more efficient and that is where all this knowledge comes from, more than 60 years of knowledge, of developing the efficient use of water and that has been replicated, and different parts of the world, each place or each territory has particular characteristics,” indicated from Rivulis.
Rivulis has developed various solutions, mainly in terms of emission and the application of water in the field; they are pioneers in self-compensating drippers and other subsequent developments that have contributed to the best use of water resources.
“Today we have a wide range of emitters, drippers, micro-sprinkling involved in micro-irrigation that can allow you a lot of solutions and diverse applications to different annual crops, vegetables, even established orchards that can last 15-20 years such as walnut trees, cherry trees; in that sense the emission part is ahead in terms of development and portfolio, and then a lot of other technological solutions; we have very interesting things, one of them is Manna, which is a software that allows you to make irrigation decisions intelligently without hardware, this based on an algorithm of satellite images that basically deliver the water status of the orchards and the use of big data of meteorological information and other climatic parameters that allow you to cross-reference the data in this algorithm, and provide that information to the client to be able to make intelligent irrigation decisions,” said the Sales & Marketing Manager Chile at Rivulis Irrigation.
But how much more efficient can water use in agriculture be by using different technological irrigation methods?
“When we think in terms of water use efficiency, in traditional irrigation with rustic technology such as furrow irrigation, the efficiency is around 35-40 percent, when we adapt micro-irrigation technology, localized irrigation, we are talking about micro-sprinkling or drip, the efficiencies go up to 85-90 percent; therefore, if one does this calculation, one could double the efficiency, even with a bad irrigation system, one could triple the efficiency, which generates a great saving of water. If a person can irrigate one hectare per furrow, they can irrigate 2.5 hectares with technical irrigation, therefore we increase production, you are more efficient and it also becomes an investment lever, which allows you to make decisions,” George-Nascimento explained.
Clearly, technology makes a great contribution to the efficiency of water use and, in turn, an obvious benefit for producers and the water situation in Chile and the world. Rivulis has a wide range of products and software for irrigation design, and they are currently working on the launch of the Reelview system that allows, in simple steps, to map a field and receive information on the humidity status of the crop.
“A fruit tree planting project in 2022 has no chance of not being watered by technical irrigation, it must be by pressurized irrigation or drip by micro-sprinkler; I had a professor more than 20 years ago who told us that there was no chance that a project at that time would be done without technical irrigation, however 20 years later orchards are still appearing that are irrigated by lines or by furrows and that, the truth is, is no longer possible today”, concluded Nicolas George-Nascimento, Sales & Marketing Manager Chile at Rivulis Irrigation.
