New technological sources of water
Water is a vital resource for life on Earth, essential for the survival of all living organisms - including us humans. In fact, for some years now, the United Nations (UN) has recognised the right to safe drinking water and sanitation as an essential human right for the full enjoyment of life. It is also one of the fundamental points of the UN's own Agenda 2030, which established the availability of and access to safe drinking water as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), announced in 2015. Freshwater is an indispensable element for the existence of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. It also plays a crucial role in the development and well-being of human societies, and is a fundamental substance for agriculture, industry, energy generation and, of course, human consumption.
Water occupies approximately 70% of the Earth's surface. Since the origins of life on Earth, it has been an indispensable ingredient for the survival of living beings. Consequently, it is also a key resource for the development and well-being of human societies, so much so that since the origins of sedentary life, water has always played a fundamental role in socio-economic evolution, as well as in the advancement of political and territorial conflicts. This is mainly due to the relative scarcity of freshwater. Despite accounting for 3.5% of the total water on the planet, only a small part of the total - 0.01% - is accessible through rivers and lakes - the rest is either frozen at the poles or accumulated in underground reservoirs. Freshwater is therefore a limited and highly precious resource. In Spain, the importance of water in the economy is particularly relevant, due to the dependence of key sectors such as agriculture, which represents a significant part of both the country's GDP and employment. In fact, water scarcity is one of the main causes of the poor harvests of recent years which, among other things, led to an unprecedented rise in the price of olive oil not only in Spain, but also in other olive oil producing countries such as Portugal, Italy and Greece.
Water availability in Spain is limited and, moreover, unevenly distributed across the territory. At the beginning of 2024, the reservoirs of some river basins in northern Spain are at 70% of their capacity, while the reserves in both the south of the peninsula and Catalonia are below 40%. In the Canary Islands, where most of the freshwater comes from desalination plants, availability is much more limited. This irregular distribution, caused by different rainfall patterns and different water uses, has generated a situation of water stress in many regions of Spain, which has been particularly aggravated in recent years due to the progression of the climate crisis. In many areas, the overexploitation of water resources has led to a decrease in the levels of aquifers, the salinisation of soils and the degradation of aquatic ecosystems. In addition, water scarcity also affects other economic sectors, such as industry and tourism, which depend on a reliable water supply to function.
The climate crisis is exacerbating these problems, not only because of the gradual rise in temperature, but also because it causes extreme phenomena, such as droughts and floods, which affect the availability and quality of water worldwide. In Spain, the effects of climate change are increasingly evident: droughts have increased in frequency and intensity, while heavy rainfall is causing devastation in other regions. These problems directly affect the Spanish economy. Perhaps one of the most publicised examples is the dehydration of Catalan vineyards, which has led to an unprecedented decline in wine and cava production in the region. In April 2024, one of the largest and most famous wineries in the area, Freixenet, presented an ERTE for 615 of its employees, almost half of the workforce, due to the impacts of the drought. The climate crisis represents an additional challenge for water management in Spain, which will require new adaptation and mitigation measures to ensure water availability and quality in the future.
In this context, sustainable water management has become a priority both for Spain and for other countries affected by scarcity and drought. Effective policies and measures are needed to promote more efficient and responsible water use, as well as to encourage recovery and reuse strategies, both to safeguard consumption and to protect and restore aquatic ecosystems and freshwater sources. Investment in new water storage and distribution infrastructures, as well as in new technological solutions for the better use of water resources, including desalination and water reuse techniques, are likely to be necessary.
According to a report recently published by the consultancy firm PwC, the water sector in Spain has undergone a major transformation over the last twenty years - a necessary change in infrastructures that, for the most part, have their origins in outdated planning, a direct consequence of the Franco era. Fortunately, thanks to the so-called "new water culture" and both political and private efforts, important advances have been made, such as the improvement of wastewater treatment or the development of effective methods for water reuse. However, many of these advances are insufficient to address the significant challenges facing the sector - including adaptation to the climate crisis. In this regard, the Ministry for Ecological Transition put forward a series of strategic policies for better water management in the context of climate change. As part of this strategic plan, the so-called Green Paper on Water Governance was created, in collaboration with different institutions and interested companies, to move towards more efficient models, prepared to face current and future challenges.
In terms of water governance in Spain, the value of strengthening collaboration with the business sector stands out. In conjunction with ICEX and the main business associations, the Directorate General for Water has developed a catalogue of water-related services offered by Spanish companies. This catalogue aims to showcase internationally the potential of Spanish companies to offer effective and efficient solutions to the water-related challenges we face in the future. In the past, approaches focused on increasing the supply and volume of water delivered used to be prioritised, but over time, new policies have been implemented that emphasise demand control. Circular economy approaches are gaining increasing relevance, in line with international commitments on climate change and the SDGs. The government has therefore redefined the Ministry's strategic lines to prioritise the availability and quality of water, first and foremost for people, but also to ensure the stability of the country's main economic activities. In general, the aim is to move towards water security, adapt to climate change and protect ecosystems and biodiversity. To achieve this, it is proposed to strengthen public administration, improve coordination between sectoral policies, increase transparency, promote citizen cooperation and co-responsibility.
Ultimately, water security has become a crucial issue for sustainable development and the well-being of societies around the world. According to UNESCO, problems related to access to safe drinking water threaten world peace and particularly affect the most impoverished populations and the most vulnerable people, such as migrants, women and girls. Addressing this challenge effectively therefore requires joint and coordinated action involving governments, business, the scientific community and society. In Spain, as we have seen, the water situation presents particular characteristics that make it a particularly sensitive case. We are in an area - and at a time - of structural water stress, with an unequal distribution of water resources and a high dependence on rainfall. However, in the face of these challenges, there are also opportunities to manage water in a more sustainable and resilient way. Water reuse and regeneration, through various technologies and innovative projects, are presented as viable alternatives to reduce pressure on natural water resources.
The advancing climate crisis - rising temperatures, increasing extreme events, migratory movements - is closely linked to access to water. Climate change, above all, increases the variability and unpredictability of the water cycle, which not only reduces the quality and quantity of water available but also makes it difficult to predict the organisation and distribution of water resources. Spain is also the driest country in Europe and, although it has reduced its water consumption by 15% in the last ten years, further adaptation is still needed to try to mitigate the effects of temperature rises. This is where water reclamation and reuse come into play, as well as desalination technologies, which are already key in island regions today. In fact, to date, it is precisely the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands that account for 80% of these reuse and exploitation solutions, and they are not yet predominant in coastal areas, which could also benefit from these sustainable and, above all, necessary solutions.
In addition to technological advances, which we will see below, regulatory advances are essential, so that the creation of new plants designed to supply not only human consumption, but also sectors such as agriculture and industry, which could face major problems in the near future, can be promoted. Spain ranks fifth in the world in terms of installed capacity in both desalination and water reuse, definitely an example to follow. Despite this, experts believe that we need more investment and development in this field, as well as starting to raise awareness among the general population about the importance of our "water footprint", perhaps more important than the famous carbon footprint, especially when we have already started to see the devastating effects of drought on agriculture and, therefore, on the economy. Actions such as diversifying water sources, improving water use efficiency and implementing early warning systems for extreme hydrological events are essential to ensure water availability and quality in a context of climate change. To adapt to these changes, we need to implement strategies at national and international level to optimise water management, from planning and efficient use to the implementation of resilient infrastructure.
Many of the solutions for desalination, water reclamation and reuse are essential for adapting to the future climate, but in many cases they are insufficient. Without falling into techno-optimism - we need much more than simple technical solutions to the problems posed by the climate crisis - there are certain advances that could help us to better manage water resources, through tools that allow us to measure water quality, detect leaks and, above all, make decisions in real time. The central government has promoted the PERTE - a strategic project for economic recovery and transformation - for the Digitalisation of the Water Cycle, which aims to improve efficiency in the management of water resources, reduce losses and make progress in meeting the objectives of the European Union and the UN in terms of hydrological planning. This plan has a total investment of more than 3,000 million euros, distributed in areas such as the digitalisation of irrigation and improved programmes for monitoring and control of discharges.
In these strategies, several technologies that we have highlighted in different editions of this report come into play, such as the internet of things, big data and artificial intelligence, among others. The internet of things and high-speed networks such as 5G provide an inexhaustible source of real-time data on water quality, level, pressure and other relevant parameters, which are obtained, analysed and collated in real time thanks to interconnected sensors. This information, transmitted and processed, enables accurate monitoring and control of water systems, facilitating early detection of problems and decision-making. In this second phase of analysis and decision-making, big data and, increasingly, artificial intelligence technologies come into play. Combined, these two solutions make it possible to process large volumes of data in real time to analyse patterns, trends and anomalies in water quality, flow, levels or energy consumption of facilities. In addition, artificial intelligence can help predict demand data - optimising distribution and reducing waste - identify points and areas of high consumption - probably related to abusive use of resources or possible leaks - and create new models and simulations to improve the prediction of possible scenarios.
Another, perhaps lesser known technology that can contribute to a better use of water resources - and also to a better prediction of water use - are the so-called "digital twins". These are digital models that simulate, in a virtual way, a real system, in this case an industrial plant or a river basin, for example. Digital twins make it possible to analyse the behaviour of these systems under different conditions, simulating changes and stress situations before they actually occur. Their use in the design of new plants and new water management plans could facilitate the optimisation of processes, the testing of control systems and the training of operators.
Space technology, such as satellites and mega-constellations, can also contribute to improved water management. Satellites have revolutionised our understanding of the water cycle, thanks to their unique perspective from space. Not only do they allow us to measure and monitor the shape of freshwater bodies and the progress of droughts through high-resolution imagery, but they can also combine these results with data from different sensors that provide information on soil moisture, groundwater levels, temperature and many other factors. A successful example is SMOS, an ESA satellite with a significant contribution from Spanish scientists, designed to measure not only soil moisture but also water salinity, to better understand the water cycle and improve predictive models. In short, the integration of these disruptive technologies in water management opens up a world of possibilities to optimise the use of this vital resource, guarantee its quality and safety, and more effectively face the challenges related to climate change and water scarcity.
The transition to a new model of water management, in addition to ensuring access to this vital resource, would also bring significant economic and social benefits. New, stronger and more precise regulatory models are expected to generate investor confidence and stimulate private sector participation. This influx of capital into the water sector could consequently be used to modernise infrastructure, implement new technologies and improve efficiency in water management, strategies that would create new jobs, both in infrastructure construction and maintenance and in water resources management.
Turning on the agricultural data tap
With its budget, the EU is boosting science and technology-based sectors that know how to squeeze productivity out of every drop of water as a raw material. The 43 billion euros for the European Chip Act take into account that each integrated circuit on a 30 cm wafer requires 8,300 litres of water; the 235 billion euros for digital technology planned until 2027 assume that today a data centre uses 25.5 million litres of water per year for each MW of electrical energy it consumes; and when Europe invests 130 billion euros in hydrogen projects, it is aware that each kilogram of hydrogen produced requires nine kilograms of demineralised water. The unfinished business is to find a way for the agri-food sector, which is responsible for consuming 70% of the continent's water resources (80% in the case of Spain), to operate at similar levels of productivity. And given that the gap between supply and demand could reach 56% by 2030, the problem that could be generated if the primary sector does not untie the Gordian knot goes beyond the worrying food issue.
The European Council resolutions of 2021 and 2023, the calls of the UN Water Conference and the Water Resilience Initiative announced in the State of the Union address in September 2023 all send the message of Europe's willingness to lead. The urgencies are clear. The most extreme projections of future irrigation declines include maize crop losses of up to 80% in countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Spain, where production may no longer be viable. In Northern Europe, farm yields of wheat, a rainfed crop, could increase by around 5%, due to changes in the precipitation pattern ahead, combined with an earlier and longer growing season due to increased CO 2 concentrations; in contrast, in Southern Europe wheat yields could fall by an average of 12%. To combat this uncertain outlook with scientific and technological innovation, the EU has designed an Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) model, but its good intentions have resulted in an amalgamation of 27 national AKIS with their regional AKIS.
In a scathing OECD review of the effectiveness of Brussels-driven measures, the 2000 Water Framework Directive is cited as having failed to achieve its original target of restoring all water surfaces and water bodies to acceptable status by 2015, and it is a challenge to achieve this by 2027. The Nitrates Directive has been in force for more than 30 years, but nitrogen surpluses from agriculture continue to affect surface and groundwater quality. It is difficult to assess the benefits of the 2009 Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive when a new proposal for a Regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products is on the table to correct it and connect with the objectives of the European Green Deal (EGD).
In the United States, the agri-food sector uses almost 280 million cubic metres of water per day to irrigate more than 200,000 farms, which in its western states consume 84% of available resources. Meat and dairy processing consumes 2.3 billion litres per day, which opens an interesting avenue to be a source of recycled water. Indeed, increased competition for water supply between agriculture, industry and public supply has pushed the agricultural sector in the US towards non-traditional sources such as stormwater, brackish aquifers and municipal and industrial wastewater. Sustainable use of these resources requires, however, the removal of salinity, organic content and harmful constituents in bulk water treatment processes. These substances must undergo precision separation: heavy metals, oil and grease and specific boron and selenium ions must be removed. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included $20 billion for the US Department of Agriculture to incentivise the introduction of sustainable agricultural practices to reduce methane emissions, increase carbon sequestration and optimise the use of agricultural inputs, including water.
The primary sector and its ability to manage water is at the centre of the spotlight when addressing the global food challenge. Global hunger figures stagnated between 2021 and 2022, but more than 122 million people have become hungry since 2019 due to the pandemic, episodes resulting from the climate crisis and the impact of conflicts such as the war in Ukraine. By 2050, 70% of the world's population is projected to reside in cities, which will require a reorientation of food systems to cater for these new urban populations. Rising food prices and declining crop productivity are a strategic challenge. The United Arab Emirates and the United States launched a joint initiative, AIM for Climate, which has been joined by many countries, including Spain, to increase investment and support innovation in climate-smart food systems. In 2022, several international financial institutions (IFIs) published the 'Action Plan to Address Food Insecurity' and the G7 pledged $4.5 billion to ensure food security worldwide.
The irrigated agricultural area grew by more than half a million hectares in Spain between 2004 and 2021, to 3.9 million, with grain cereals (24.1% of land), olive groves (22.6%), non-citrus fruit trees (10.6%) and vineyards (10.3%) leading the way. It already accounts for 22.6% of the cultivated area, but contributes 65% to final crop production. Despite this, water consumption has stagnated over this time thanks to the introduction of technology, which does not prevent 71% of irrigation resources from still being surface water and 23.5% from being groundwater, while non-conventional resources account for just 2.8% of the total.
Technological modernisation strategies should be accompanied by other policies to control water demand, limit withdrawals or limit the area irrigated, because innovation is opening the door to new methods, but it is still slow and uneven across the globe. 85% of the world's 242 million hectares of irrigated fields still use flood irrigation, a method created 5,000 years ago in which about half of the water is lost to evaporation. Centre-pivot irrigation, using sprinklers, is advancing, but it requires a high initial capital outlay and consumes high amounts of energy, so it is only installed on about 12% of irrigated agriculture globally. Pressurised drip irrigation increases precision and efficiency, but also uses a lot of energy to filter the water and distribute it across the field. It requires a high initial capital investment and has high maintenance costs, so it is generally only used on high-value crops. In fact, it is only installed on 3% of the world's irrigated agricultural land.
The gravity micro-irrigation approach, which is credited with a revolutionary ability to address the challenge of water scarcity, is gaining momentum. It uses only the gravity-driven infrastructure of a flood-irrigated field and distributes water through drip irrigation pipes. It requires half the supply and polluting fertiliser currently used in flood-irrigated fields and is cost-effectively priced even for staple crops such as maize, cotton, alfalfa, potatoes, sugar cane and rice. By its very configuration, it can be an ideal solution to significantly reduce greenhouse gases that are abundant in agriculture, including carbon and methane.
Desalination studies also open the door to a greater role for this technology in certain areas. In the United States, 24% of all water in the food industry is used for meat processing and 12% for dairy and cheese production. In the former case, adopting desalination of the wastewater from the brine of hides and skins could recover more than 60% of the salts for reuse. The dairy and cheese industry produces six times more wastewater by volume than it consumes, so there are similar opportunities for salt recovery. In both industries, improved salt and protein separation processes could increase salt reuse at lower cost.
Digital technology contributes to the treatment and reuse of agricultural water, for integration with other sources of supply, although it still has much room for evolution. Remote sensing techniques, such as drones and satellites, have been widely used to monitor crop health and soil water use at different spatial scales. On the ground, sensors that provide real-time information on aspects such as soil moisture, conductivity, salinity, pH and temperature need to be made more resilient and stable in order for their monitoring to feed fully autonomous systems. The materials of which they are made must resist contamination by salt, sediment, natural organic matter or algae and be resistant to the variable physical conditions of the environment in which they are located. Remote sensor systems must also be integrated into the internet of things, with distributed intelligence enabling localised decision-making, and connected to telecommunications networks via Wi-Fi, 5G or satellite or microwave-based connectivity, to benefit from cloud-based data processing, storage and analysis. With its big data approach coupled with an artificial intelligence system using machine learning, the startup Kilimo helps farmers sell water offsets to companies that want to be consumption-neutral. Thanks to its activity in Latin America, it has generated savings of more than 72 billion litres of water in the region. This is a sector whose constituents typically work with small margins, requiring low-cost solutions.
This is a similar drawback to that faced by breeding technologies that make crop varieties more resilient to water shortages. Yields are not guaranteed and up to ten years of research are needed before each market launch, which makes these solutions less attractive to small and medium-sized enterprises. When genetics work, as has been shown in crops such as soybeans, combined with conservation tillage and cover crops, they help to maintain soil moisture and achieve yields that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago in today's climatic conditions. Halfway through the digital sector, InnerPlant is developing seed technology that harnesses plant physiology and unlocks data to improve agricultural yields; and Israel's SupPlant uses an advanced algorithm that analyses real-time plant data, alongside that provided by weather and soil sensors, and translates it into irrigation recommendations and useful information. Its technology is aimed primarily at large land owners, who account for only about 2% of all farmers worldwide, but it has adapted it for small farmers with a new, cheaper version.
Innovations in irrigation must be introduced with an eye not only to their impact on productivity, but also on equity, inequality and social justice in relation to access to water, infrastructure and technological advances. Today, more than half of agricultural land is degraded, leading to productivity losses of $400 billion a year and, at the centre of the focus, are the smallholder farms that produce 29% of the world's crops. A notable feature of the water supply chain is the importance of political economy considerations and the crucial role of the public sector in its establishment and management. Entities such as the World Economic Forum therefore call for multidisciplinary approaches, such as those represented by the water-energy-food nexus. Actions in each of these areas influence the others, synergistically or adversely, at different levels and scales.
Thus, the development of water-efficient agriculture often implies a significant increase in energy consumption, to the extent that rising energy prices have recently become the new threat to the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. Treating non-conventional water requires more energy (0.3-2.1 kWh m3 ) than conventional water (0.3-2.1 kWh m3 ).3 for waste water; 0,951-1,942 kWh m3 for brackish water; 4,0 kWh m3 for seawater) than raw freshwater (0-0,198 kWh m3). There are even calls from some quarters to prioritise rain-fed agriculture, following in the footsteps of Morocco's success in making rain-fed agriculture profitable and thus contributing to the national economy. It should not be necessary to go to such lengths if the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution are harnessed to shift the paradigm from individual silos to the integrative nexus, especially because of their ability to develop new tools for integration, quantification and visualisation. World food prices would have been 35% to 65% higher without Green Revolution technologies, including irrigation, but the direct and indirect impacts on production would have resulted in 4% to 7% higher agricultural production in the developed world and 14% to 19% lower in the developing world.
In this sense, the data is once again the key reference point. In this sense, the reality is still far from what is desirable in our country, despite the fact that it suffers one of the highest levels of water stress in the OECD, it is estimated that from 2040 onwards it will receive on average 12% less contributions and between 2070-2100 the fall could be 24%. The implementation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's Digitalisation Strategy through the II Action Plan 2021-2023 has attempted to correct this with the creation of a data aggregation system specifically for the agri-food sector, the BigMAPA big data platform, the promotion of existing digital tools (SiAR, SIEX), a Digitalisation Observatory for the agri-food sector and a programme to support precision agriculture and 4.0 technologies in the sector. But the Water Cycle Digitisation Expert himself acknowledged that "due to, among other factors, the incomplete digitisation of the water cycle, complete information on water use is not available in the knowledge society".
In Spain, it is the basin authorities, and not the agricultural authorities in charge of irrigation policies, that determine the volume of water supplied to farms, depending on the availability of resources and the rights of users, in particular through the irrigation communities. Small groundwater abstractions of less than 7,000 m3 /year must be registered but do not require authorisation, and the extent of the problem of illegal abstractions is not fully known due to the lack of official data. About 20% to 35% of groundwater and surface water bodies are at risk of diffuse pollution, with high nitrate concentrations, eutrophication due to excess phosphorus and salinisation in the case of some areas along the Mediterranean coast. Nor is it easy to know the water prices set by the basin authorities in Spain, which makes it difficult to make a reliable assessment of cost recovery and the impact on prices of water scarcity and pricing methods, although since 2009 it has been necessary to install meters and volumetric prices in order to receive public aid for the modernisation of irrigation systems.
The data allows building a strategy to boost management systems that help increase water productivity (WP) in agriculture, the preferred metric used to measure irrigation effectiveness. In developing countries, it has been shown that farmer-led developments are more productive than government-led collective irrigation schemes. When the agricultural sector takes water management into their own hands, they innovate to increase production by supplementing rainfed crops and growing an additional crop during the dry season. As a result, they accrue greater benefits in the form of improved nutrition, higher incomes and greater climate resilience.
A multi-faceted approach to the Spanish countryside
The Water Cycle Digitalisation Report itself recognises that, given the lack of full digitalisation of the water use cycle, both at user and administrative level, there is insufficient information available in Spain on water consumption and losses in distribution networks due to leaks, breakages or filtrations. In recent years, different regulatory changes have appeared in water legislation that have led to greater control of the flows granted in concessions and, based on these, of users' consumption. Water concessionaires must have measurement systems in place to check and control the flows used. However, there is still some way to go.
The vast majority of irrigated land is managed communally and is distributed as follows: the localised irrigation system is implemented on 2,032,755 hectares, representing 53% of the total irrigated area; this is followed by the gravity irrigation system, which is applied on 23.56% of the land in use; the irrigation system has a share of 14.95%; and in fourth place is self-propelled irrigation, present on 8.4% of the surface area. With a view to the future, the climate change scenarios for Spain foresee less water availability, with a reduction in available water resources of between 12% and 40% before the end of the century, depending on the regions, and a more irregular distribution of rainfall, making it essential to continue improving the efficiency and sustainability of irrigation.
In September 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture launched La Vega Innova, a digital innovation hub (iHub) envisaged in the Transformation and Resilience Recovery Plan, to drive the transformation of the agri-food sector through experimentation in real environments. Telefónica España was awarded the contract to provide services for this centre, which is to function as an incubator for start-ups. In the first call, the companies selected included AonChip, which specialises in the internet of things and is based in Barcelona, whose objective is to improve efficiency in the use of water in agricultural environments, especially in areas with communication difficulties. To this end, it offers sensors and irrigation controllers with long-range connectivity and low consumption.
The lines of attack on the water problem in agriculture can be unsuspected. Arada, an innovative engineering company from Lorca, observed that a substantial part of the water consumed by the agricultural sector in our country is stored in uncovered reservoirs, and this causes between 7% and 13% of the resource to be lost through evaporation. There are 67,000 reservoirs in Spain and less than 0.1% are covered. To solve this, it launched H2OLock, a system that reduces evaporation in irrigation ponds by up to 85%, and also prevents algae growth. It combines individual floating modules, similar to buoys, which assemble like a puzzle thanks to their hexagonal shape and completely cover any irrigation pond.
In the field of R&D, the Agreen project, promoted by Aigües de Barcelona together with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Cetaqua, aims to demonstrate that reclaimed water is safe and that it is an optimal solution for agricultural activity. To this end, a pilot station has been set up at the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat in a greenhouse of the UPC's Agrópolis with different experimental crops irrigated with up to six types of water from different sources in the Baix Llobregat, including reclaimed water. In a similar vein, the European LIFE WARRIOR project is based on the implementation of recycled membranes to produce quality water suitable for agricultural irrigation, revaluing waste and reducing the carbon footprint. And John Deere's Parla Innovation Center has carried out a pioneering R&D project to achieve significant savings in vineyard irrigation water through the use of IoT technology and real-time data analytics in the cloud. Spherag, an international leader in IoT solutions, Azud, a company specialising in efficient irrigation, and Metos, a specialist in precision agriculture, as well as the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, through Viticulture professor Pilar Baeza, have joined forces.