Smart Irrigation: Water on Demand for the Farming Sector

The Spanish farming sector doesn’t need a blood transfusion; it needs to clear the cholesterol from its veins. Climate change is set to slash water availability in Spain by an average of 12% by 2040, reaching a 40% drop by the turn of the century. Rising temperatures will be compounded by increasingly erratic rainfall, with episodes like those witnessed in the opening weeks of 2026 becoming the new normal. It’s vital to keep sharpening the efficiency and sustainability of irrigation, which accounts for over 70% of the country’s water consumption.

On top of this, new players are competing for water resources. For example, Europe is determined to produce its own semiconductors, yet every single integrated circuit on a 30cm wafer gobbles up 8,300 litres of water.

It stands to reason that innovation is pivoting toward the agri-food sector: the World Resources Institute predicts a staggering 56% gap between global water supply and demand by 2030. This raises the alarming prospect of food security—an issue NATO has already flagged as a top priority for the coming years.

Options for boosting the supply from conventional sources are wearing thin. Researchers from the University of Colorado, the University of Kansas, and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales have analysed the lakes that hold 87% of the Earth’s liquid freshwater; they found significant declines in 53% of them over the last three decades.

To get ahead of the curve, the EU is set to push two major initiatives in 2026 that have long been championed by groups like Water Europe: the Water Resilience Strategy and the European Climate Adaptation Plan, both of which follow Ursula von der Leyen’s recent State of the Union commitments.

Gabriel Sevillano, Director of Water for Agriculture at ACCIONA, highlights the solutions likely to define irrigation in the years to come. He explains that his company provides “technical assistance and management for some 25 irrigation communities in Spain,” and that a key focus is “packaging our solutions to export and adapt them to the needs of other regions.”

He agrees that, among all water users, agriculture is “where there’s the most room for improvement,” noting that the inconsistent performance across different irrigation communities is a major factor to address.

Surprisingly, 85% of the world’s irrigated fields still rely on flood irrigation—a 5,000-year-old method where roughly half the water is lost to evaporation. Spain, however, is leading the pack: over 80% of its land has been modernised, boasting the world’s largest area dedicated to drip irrigation. This ultra-efficient system is seen as a game-changer in the fight against water scarcity.

Beyond traditional sources, hopes are increasingly pinned on reuse and desalination, though they currently account for less than 5% of the water reaching Spanish farms. There’s also work to be done in overcoming the “yuck factor”: scientists at Stanford and Illinois universities compared samples from water reuse systems with conventional tap water and found that, in every instance, the reused water had lower cytotoxicity.

“There’s no reason to use water only once,” says Peter Fiske of the US National Alliance for Water Innovation. In Europe, Commission reports suggest that current water reuse levels could be increased sixfold—no small feat, given that at least 11% of Europeans are already feeling the pinch of water scarcity.

One if the biggest perks of reuse is water on demand—with quality and traceability that often beats conventional sources.

One of the biggest perks of reuse, according to Gabriel Sevillano, is “water on demand—with quality and traceability that often beats conventional sources.”

ACCIONA is also developing containerised desalination units that can be deployed quickly to the heart of the problem, including remote areas or disaster zones. These modular reverse osmosis systems are housed in shipping containers and delivered as “turnkey” solutions, capable of churning out between 1,500 and 2,000 cubic metres of water per day, per container.

Streamlining regulation and cutting through red tape will be essential for these methods to take off in Spain, which has fallen slightly behind its neighbours. Experts are urging authorities to ensure that bureaucracy doesn’t act as a clog in the sector’s ability to adapt.

Over the last 25 years, water consumption per hectare in Spain has dropped by an average of 20%, thanks to system upgrades and digitisation. While the total irrigated area has grown, demand has hit a plateau. This is a cornerstone of food sovereignty, considering an irrigated hectare produces six times as much as a rain-fed one.

However, there’s still work to do regarding transparency in costs and consumption—an area where the OECD has issued a stern wake-up call. This data, managed by irrigation communities, is vital for keeping demand in check and limiting over-extraction.

“The cost of a cubic metre in modern irrigation is essentially the energy cost of pumping that water and delivering it to the plot at the right pressure,” Sevillano explains. “Renewables are playing a bigger role every day; the energy landscape is unrecognisable from 20 years ago thanks to the boom in solar technology.”

Even so, the ACCIONA director adds that the gold standard is “implementing irrigation where regulation elements, like reservoirs, are on higher ground. This allows gravity to do the heavy lifting, providing natural pressure without burning through energy.”

Venture capital trends for 2025 from AgFunder show a shift in the wind: for the first time, the lion’s share of agrotech investment went into bioengineering and biostimulants.

Gabriel Sevillano believes these are the future, “provided they are commercially viable.” ACCIONA is currently involved in a project that treats pig farm slurry to create a new source of irrigation water. “We have to make these processes pay for themselves,” he notes.

The same rule applies to satellite imagery, digital twins, and the Internet of Things (IoT): they must fit seamlessly into the “day-to-day grind of the irrigation communities.” Meanwhile, genetic engineering is proving to be a powerful tool for boosting water efficiency, delivering yields that would have been a pipe dream 20 years ago under today’s harsh climate.

Somewhere between biology and bits, California-based InnerPlant has developed “talking seeds.” They use plant physiology to allow the crops themselves to signal when they are thirsty, providing data to help farmers fine-tune their yields. Similarly, Israel’s SupPlant uses an algorithm to process real-time data from plants, soil, and weather sensors into tailored irrigation advice.

Ultimately, the ability to marry physical infrastructure with digital tools—from satellite data to edge computing—will determine how the agri-food sector weathers the coming decades. Even the best data is useless without a sustainable, energy-efficient network to deliver the water. This time, the “offline” infrastructure will be the deciding factor.

Sources:

Eugenio Mallol is a journalist specializing in technological innovation. He created the INNOVADORES supplement in El Mundo and La Razón, which he directed for 11 years. He is currently Director of Strategy and Communications at Atlas Tecnológico, as well as analyst and coordinator of the Science and Society Chair at the Rafael del Pino Foundation. He is a columnist for Forbes Spain and contributes to digital outlets such as InnovaSpain and Valencia Plaza. He is also the author of books and reports on technological innovation and a frequent speaker.

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