Spain - Artificial Intelligence allows saving up to 10% of water in irrigation

Date:01-17-2025

The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in agriculture will allow savings of up to 10% of irrigation water without compromising crop production and yield, according to estimates by the AI Working Group of the National Federation of Irrigation Communities (FENACORE). 

This highlights the potential of this technology to optimize resources, improve sustainability, and face the challenges of climate change.

FENACORE assures that these tools will revolutionize water management, allowing precise and efficient irrigation optimization. This is in line with the efforts that Spanish irrigators have been demonstrating for years to improve their productivity and sustainability.

In addition to significant water and energy savings, FENACORE admits that AI tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot already facilitate administrative management in irrigation communities, freeing up time and resources for administrative tasks and allowing them to focus on irrigation optimization and sustainability.

Spanish irrigation, a world reference

As FENACORE highlights, these efforts have made Spanish irrigation a world reference for being one of the most modernized.

In this scenario, the Federation supports the use of European funds and the PERTE for Digitalization to develop AI and implement it in irrigation. It advocates and promotes any improvement aimed at efficiency in the use of water and fertigation. In fact, through European projects such as the Life Triplet project, of which FENACORE is a part, they are already using Big Data and its analysis for the intelligent application of water and nutrients in irrigation.

Thus, the use of AI with the incorporation of sensors and satellite images is also marking a before-and-after in predictive maintenance. These technologies allow early detection of problems such as clogged sprinklers before they affect farms' performance. In addition, advanced algorithms such as neural networks and Transformer models are facilitating the prediction of water demand with an unprecedented level of precision, thus improving planning and sustainable use of resources.

Advances in the digitalization of the field

Advances are not limited to data analysis. Digital twins - virtual models that simulate irrigation scenarios in real time - allow parameters to be dynamically adjusted according to the specific needs of the crop. At the same time, intelligent mapping identifies active infrastructures and crop areas, even in remote or difficult-to-access areas, improving the overall management of irrigation systems. Similarly, adaptive automated systems integrate climate, energy, and agronomic data to optimize the use of resources, setting a new standard in agricultural efficiency, for example, through specialized AI models in the area of hydrodynamics, which constantly evaluate the performance of the network, and integrate specific behaviors from information given to it, even in natural language, with the new power of generative AI. The aim is for the network to learn to be efficient through reinforcement and analysis of its own results instead of having to parameterize it constantly.

Within the framework of the digitalization of the field, FENACORE calls for strengthening the commitment to training farmers to generalize and accelerate the application of these technologies, which is not without challenges. In its opinion, the promotion of tailor-made training plans would contribute to overcoming resistance to change and the lack of familiarity with these technological advances, which continue to be essential barriers in the primary sector, as well as the management of large volumes of data in real-time.

In the international context, China and the European Union lead investments in AI applied to irrigation, demonstrating the importance of decisive support from both the public and private sectors.

According to the president of Fenacore, Juan Valero de Palma, ″the commitment of the field to technology is unavoidable to be more sustainable and productive every day, as well as to guarantee generational change. Specifically, AI has the potential to revolutionize irrigation, but it is essential to continue researching and developing solutions that are accessible and easy to use for farmers. With the support of interdisciplinary collaboration and sustained investment, water management is ready to take a leap forward with AI towards unprecedented efficiency and sustainability. Irrigation in Spain is once again taking the initiative and leading the world in the application of AI in irrigation.″