Effirem Project
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Project description
Reducing the cost of irrigation through energy efficiency and reducing water consumption guarantees the competitiveness of sugar beet in Spain.
The aim of the Task Force is to encourage farmers to adopt innovative measures to reduce the cost of the energy bill for irrigation and optimise water consumption, in order to ensure the competitiveness and sustainability of the sugar beet sector after the disappearance of the quota system in Europe in 2017 and the end of the current CAP period in 2020.
Although a great effort has been made to modernise the old irrigation systems, many farmers still irrigate with groundwater from deep boreholes and face energy costs that account for 35% of the total costs of cultivation. These costs hamper the crop’s competitiveness despite yields far exceeding those of other European countries.
During the initial phase of setting up the Operational Group, the partners will define in detail the partial objectives to be achieved, the scope of the project and the work plan to be developed in the future Innovation project. This action has been co-financed by the National Rural Development Programme, Ministry of Agriculture and Feader (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development).
Reply from Encore-Lab
Implementation of field sensors, monitoring system and agro-climatic station
Results
The objectives to be achieved by the Task Force are mainly focused on sugar beet farmers with probes who will be able to reduce their energy cost in irrigation by 60-75%, but it can be extrapolated to other irrigated crops where the cost of irrigation represents a high percentage of the production cost.
