Instruments for water quantity and quality management in the agriculture of Aragon (Spain)

Irrigated agriculture has always been relevant to the Aragonese society. The major expansion of irrigation took place during the XX century to promote economic growth and to improve farmers’ social conditions in rural Spain. At present, maintaining irrigation in Aragon is still important because agriculture is linked to a strong agribusiness sector, and because irrigation contributes to avoid depopulation and territorial unbalances. The traditional policy of developing new irrigated areas has been changed to irrigation modernization through investments in distribution networks and on-farm irrigation equipments. This new policy creates opportunities to introduce more profitable crops, conserve irrigation water and abate agricultural nonpoint pollution. Several alternatives open to irrigated agriculture are bioethanol and biodiesel technologies (which could provide a support price for grains), the expansion of profitable fruits and vegetables under drip irrigation, and the diversification of water using activities (animal farming, industries, residential areas and sport utilities). Alternative measures to abate agricultural nonpoint pollution are examined in this paper. Modernizing irrigation structures leads to a large reduction of pollution, and introduces reasonable costs to farmers (in terms of their rent). Results also show that water pricing advocated by the European Water Framework Directive is a wrong policy in irrigation, because irrigation demand does not respond to prices and also because water pricing is not cost efficient to abate pollution.