The role and significance of irrigation

Helyes, Lajos

One of the fundamental aims of irrigation is to improve the food supply of an ever-growing population. 17% of the world’s arable land is currently irrigated, however, this area provides over 40% of the annually harvestable crops. Hungary has 210,000 hectares of land with licensed water rights, equipped for irrigation – equating to almost 5% of arable land – however, only about half of this area is actually irrigated, depending on weather conditions. The EU average for irrigated arable land is 13.5%.

The basic development tasks for the next few years are to renew and expand existing irrigation equipment. Among arable crops, maize, sunflower, sugar beet and potato should be irrigated. Increasing the ratio of irrigated land is of particular importance in horticultural settings. In the cultivation of vegetables, medicinal plants, fruit and floriculture, high production values are generated per unit of land, therefore, the lack of irrigation is a significant risk for producers (entrepreneurs). In order to be competitive with EU producers, irrigated land needs to be increased by about 100,000 hectares.

When planning irrigation capacity, considerable annual variations in the volume and distribution of precipitation need to be taken into consideration. For this reason, successful and reliable production can require considerable variations in water volume – as much as 5-10 fold – in consecutive years. The most significant costs of irrigation are water and drainage fees, amortisation and energy usage. The average cost of irrigating one hectare of the land being studied, depending of course on weather conditions (wet or dry year), fluctuated between 35,000 and 87,000 forints/hectare and the six-year average was 57,000 forints.