Can irrigation be sustainable

July is Smart Irrigation Month — a time to consider the social, economic and environmental benefits of efficient irrigation at home and on the farm. Efficient irrigation reduces the worst environmental impacts of overwatering. Runoff leaches crop nutrients and chemicals into freshwater sources and contaminates critical habitats. Besides saving water and increasing yield, farmers can also save on pumping energy costs and wear and tear on their irrigation systems.

And the higher yield and crop quality will contribute to increased profitability. The concept of sustainable irrigation is not only limited to the physical place where irrigation is applied, but it takes into account the impacts of manufacturing and transportation of required equipment and materials, as well as incurred discharges and waste impacts.

The impacts of implementation, operation and maintenance of the works, directly or indirectly needed for irrigation and often located at long distances, are not to be ignored as well. In order to be sustainable, irrigation has to cope with climate shifts of the areas where it is practiced.

Therefore, it must overcome droughts and, in a larger scale, the effects of global climate change. Thus, leaning on other disciplines, such as those related with crop selection and improvement, automation and telecommunications, institutional governance and others, might be crucial.

Finally, in the same way that sustainable irrigation has to be able to face water shortages, it should also be immune to other resources scarcities, such as energetic and economic, through a long time period.

Source: Mays, Larry W. It allow to create list of users contirbution. Assignment does not change access privileges to resource content. Wrong email address. You're going to remove this assignment. Are you sure? Yes No. Wuhan University, Peoples Republic of China. Additional information Publication languages: English. Data set: Elsevier. Publisher Elsevier Science. Fields of science No field of science has been suggested yet.

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