SWaRA – Sustainable WAter for a Resilient Agriculture

Making use of alternative water sources for irrigation enhances the resilience of our agriculture in the face of climate change

Context

Against a backdrop of increasingly frequent droughts and mounting pressure on water resources, the SWaRA project is helping to strengthen the range of irrigation options available to farmers, in particular by investigating the potential for reusing water from the agri-food industry and by refining estimates of the soil water reserves available for crops.

SWaRA is an Interreg France-Wallonia-Flanders project. It takes a broad, cross-border approach, incorporating regulatory, organisational, technical and financial aspects.

Objectives

The aim is to launch four pilot projects on the reuse of industrial water and to develop new digital tools to improve irrigation advice, particularly with regard to alternative water sources.

Project structure

The project comprises six work packages: 1) project management, 2) implementation of a cross-border communication strategy, 3) streamlining procedures for project leaders involved in water reuse, 4) engaging farmers in the irrigation network for these projects, 5) developing decision-support tools, and 6) optimising the quality of reused water and monitoring its impact on soils and crops.

Expected results

The expected outcomes from the project partners are:

• The preparation of applications for authorisation to reuse water for irrigation at the four pilot sites.

• A description of the planned water distribution system for water reuse at the four pilot sites, together with the investment and operating costs.

• The drafting of model collaboration agreements between farmers, and between farmers and water suppliers, for the reuse of industrial water.

• Making VITO’s WaterRadar tool available in Wallonia and France, which enables water suppliers and users to connect with one another.

• Analyses of the quality of reused water, and reports on the condition of crops before, during and after the irrigation trials.

The CRA-W, for its part, will contribute to the development of digital tools:

• Improving the Safe2Reuse tool, enabling risk analysis for water reuse projects.

• The real-time online publication on Agromet.be of a spatialised precipitation observation product, a spatialised reference evapotranspiration product, and a reference product for estimating usable water reserves in soils, which will support existing irrigation guidelines.