The secretary-general of the National Water Council argues that farmers should pay for water and warned that Portugal “throws” 400 million euros into the sea every year because it does not reuse that resource.
In an interview with Lusa, Poças Martins warned that “free water” and subsidies to farmers are “perverted” and that “a paradigm shift” is needed in Portuguese agriculture.
The former Secretary of State for the Environment in the last government of Cavaco Silva reaffirmed that the construction of dams is not a solution to combat drought, but rather “adjust the use of water” to its availability, “saving, more efficient [no uso de água] and calculate”.
“Right now we can’t ask for more dams while farmers are not efficient at irrigation. We can’t build more dams and then water in August,” he defended.
According to Poças Martins, irrigation in Portugal is “not done sparingly” by farmers because they do not count: “In Portugal you practically do not pay for water [para a Agricultura] and water is not metered and what is not metered or paid for is not saved,” he said.
The professor at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto believed that less water could be spent on agriculture in Portugal.
“Farmers have to be more economical with water, they have to choose their crops better. For example, because the soils in Portugal are not suitable for cereals, which consume a lot of water, Portugal practically does not grow cereals and that is good, no, we may think that we have more have to be self-sufficient in grains because we can’t afford it”, orphan.
According to him, “there are countries with less water than Portugal and which are better”, because, he emphasized, “they do something that is not done by everyone in Portugal and that is the right way, which is to reuse water”.
In Portugal, said Poças Martins, millions of liters of water are wasted: “We have a huge amount of water, residual water, which we waste at sea, on which we already spend 60 or 70 cents per cubic meter, there are 600 billion liters, which is at about 400 million euros a year that we are literally throwing into the sea,” he warned.
According to the professor, water is not reused in Portugal, because “farmers get water from sources that pay zero, they get water from rivers that pay zero and they pay 0.03 cents per liter from Alqueva”.
“If farmers paid more for water, it would be economical to reuse this water that is currently being thrown into the sea. There needs to be a paradigm shift in agriculture, like 20 years ago with water for public supply,” he explained. .
The subsidies paid to farmers are also another problem pointed out by the former governor: “Because most farmers have cheap water and are permanently accustomed to many subsidies, they are not efficient (…), the subsidies are perverse” he classified.
“The biggest help in Portugal to farmers, but maybe not help, is to give free water, because free water is perverse, it doesn’t stimulate development, it does not stimulate savings, it does not stimulate efficiency,” he concluded. .
Source: DN
