Farmers in Spain Struggle to Efficiently Irrigate Orchards, Impacting Crop Yields and Water Productivity
This study looked at how well fruit orchards in Valencia, Spain are being watered. Researchers measured how effectively farmers were using irrigation systems for persimmon and peach trees over four years. They found that many farmers were not giving their crops enough water, leading to lower fruit yields. Even though improvements were made to modernize irrigation systems, some farmers still didn't water their orchards properly. This means that some fruit trees didn't get the right amount of water they needed to grow well. The study showed that there was a lot of variation between farmers in how efficiently they used water for irrigation.