While agricultural water use in the world constitutes approximately 70% of total sectoral water use, this value is 25% for Europe and 81% for Africa and Asia. The distribution of sectoral water uses may also differ depending on a country’s level of development. According to 2021 data, water use for agricultural irrigation purposes in Türkiye has a share of 77% in total use with 45.05 billion cubic meters.
Agricultural irrigation constitutes a significant part of sectoral water use. Therefore, the amount of water savings to be achieved as a result of improving agricultural irrigation efficiency will be high.
It is aimed to increase the irrigation efficiency rate, which is currently approximately 50%, to 55% in 2024 in accordance with the By-law on Control of Water Use in Irrigation Systems and Reduction of Water Losses, and this rate is aimed to be increased to 75% in the future.
Efforts continue to ensure the modernization of irrigation systems, disseminating the use of high technology in irrigation management, disseminating good agricultural practices codes and vertical farming applications, determining the crop pattern by taking into account the water availability in the region and choosing crops that consume less water, especially in arid regions, and harmonizing product subsidies accordingly, minimize water loss and obtain the highest production efficiency from unit water through methods such as expanding rainwater harvesting and reusing water returned from irrigation and treated wastewater in agricultural irrigation.
By disseminating these methods and reaching 75% of irrigation efficiency, it is possible to additionally irrigate an area of more than half of Konya’s surface area with the water saved.
Not tomorrow, right now