With the annual rainfall in the country’s southern half barely reaching 70% of the norm, authorities and farmers must change their farming methods. It was the opinion of Iurie Usurelu, director of the Consolidated Unit for the Implementation of IFAD Programs and the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, guests of the program “National Consens” of RLIVE TV.
Iurie Usurelu said that irrigation plays a special role in maintaining productivity per hectare. Today, experts are proposing several ways to restore and expand water supply systems on agricultural land.
“National projects to increase irrigable areas focus on developing irrigation infrastructure from the source to the producer’s field by expanding existing ones, building irrigation stations from scratch from open source to the farmland, and last but not least, cleaning up good water sources for irrigation. We also encourage the connection to irrigation systems of farmers gathered in groups of local producers,” said Iurie Usurelu.
FOR THE MOSTÂ IMPORTANT NEWS, FOLLOW US ONÂ TWITTER!
For his part, Vasile Sarban said that agriculture needs controlled irrigation, not one that is detrimental to the environment.
“Implement irrigation where the water quality is good. We need to move to more economical irrigation techniques with sensors at different depths, drip irrigation, and micro-sprinkler irrigation that allow maximum use of water resources. To maintain our water reserves, we need to cover some lakes with photovoltaic panels to reduce the intensity of water evaporation,” said the Secretary of State.
In the Republic of Moldova, about 40,000 hectares of agricultural areas are irrigated, compared to about 300,000 hectares in 1990.