WIRE - Water & Irrigated agriculture Resilient Europe (AG112)

Climate change effects are resulting in increasing farmers’ need to irrigate, not only in the southern and central part of Europe, but also in Northern Europe. Therefore, sustainable adaptation strategies in new and mature markets need innovation and well-targeted investments.

Three priorities have been identified and will be primarily addressed:  

• efficient water reuse in irrigation
• energy saving in irrigation
• integrated agricultural water management under drought.

WIRE helps customising existing or upcoming innovation to the farmers’ and growers’ needs, and to facilitate innovation uptake in the complex, multi-faceted irrigated agriculture reality and market.

This will be carried out by taking into account the specific requirements deriving from the agro- climatic conditions across the EU, the legal framework as well as the diversity of farming systems and crops. For this purpose numerous case studies have been selected to implement and test solutions. An overview on WIRE case studies is provided in this document.

WIRE connects and cooperates with the EIP on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability, with a strong commitment to develop synergies where possible and to draw on mutual benefits. WIRE will contribute to make use of innovation to promote a more sustainable water management and more effective return of investments in agriculture.

Currently the WIRE Action Group integrates an impressive list of 48 partners from all relevant sectors and domains.

For more details on the current state of the WIRE Action Group, please have a look at the following documents

• WIRE Brochure
• general presentation
• poster from the Barcelona conference in Nov 2014
• presentation held at the Nov 2014 Task Force meeting or a
• presentation held at the workshop on Regional cooperation for innovation on water management (Brussels, 18 March 2015) in horticulture which was co-organised by the WIRE AG.