Water and Agriculture
Sustainability, Markets and Policies
Agriculture is a major user of water and is responsible for much of its pollution. But the agricultural sector faces increasing competition for scarce water supplies from urban and industrial users and, increasingly, to sustain ecosystems. This conference proceedings explores how both governments and the private sector can expand the role of markets to allocate water used by all sectors and to get agricultural producers to account for the pollution that their sector generates.
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Irrigation Sustainability in the Land Use/Soil System in South Italy
Results from a GIS Simplified Approach and Future Methodological Developments
The optimisation of water use in agriculture is a key factor in rural development and agri-environmental management. The full utilisation of the available water means the possibility of enlarging the irrigated areas and reducing the environmental impact of water use. The irrigation sustainability evaluation in Objective 1 Italian Regions, taking into specific consideration the interaction between irrigated land use, irrigation soil suitability and three different irrigation techniques, is one of the supports to water resources management. The methodological approach, based on the use of GIS (Geographic Information System) technology to integrate different data typologies and sources, and on the development of an irrigation efficiency index (IEff), allows estimation of the inefficiencies in m3 of wastewater.
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