Farmers hold key role in fight against climate change

Farmers in Mediterranean agricultural regions need to be encouraged to adopt more efficient water use methods in response to climate change, according to an agricultural sciences professor.

Speaking to Anadolu, Guido D'Urso, a professor of agricultural hydraulics, irrigation, and remote sensing at the University of Naples Federico II, said preparing fertile land in the Mediterranean basin for extreme weather events would not only protect the land itself, but could also prevent losses that might otherwise prove devastating for production and farmers.

He noted that as changing climate conditions increase the importance of water across the Mediterranean basin, as elsewhere in the world, measures in agriculture, the sector with the highest water consumption, are of vital importance.

He underlined that all the tools needed to prepare and monitor processes are already available through technology, and can be used both to respond to disasters and to identify vulnerabilities in advance.

D'Urso noted that irrigation water is on everyone's agenda, but the discussion tends to remain at a qualitative level.

"Water accounting procedure should be standardized in such a way that in every place, we know exactly how much water is available, where this has to be used for civilian, industrial, agricultural use. So, this makes all the allocation policies much more transparent to everybody.

"This is quite easy to implement from the theoretical point of view, but in practice, this is facing a lot of problems because the water sector is ruled by different authorities. Inevitably, there are conflicts and availability of objective data. We have to take this into account in order to make the entire hydrological process more transparent and how we use water resources for a better management," he said.

Young generation's aptitude for technology can accelerate transformation in agriculture

D'Urso noted that public awareness of climate change is growing and that younger generations are far more sensitive to such environmental issues, stressing that this generational shift should be treated as an opportunity.

He pointed to young farmers' greater comfort with technology compared to previous generations.

"All the steps we take in using water resources, primarily in agriculture, can now rely on new technologies. This generational shift is also taking place on farms. Let us make use of this change to obtain more data using the technologies available today and to move toward data-driven agriculture," he said.

He recalled that past policy — particularly in Türkiye — has relied on building large dams that can be complex to manage, and said there is significant scope for increasing drought resilience through farm-level interventions and nature-based solutions.

"We need to provide incentive to the farmers to use more drip irrigation, subsurface irrigation, which avoid evaporation, and also using technologies based on remote control of these pipelines and in order to monitor continuously, try to open and manage more effectively the water which is being distributed to the field. So, all this combined are really representing huge steps in improving the water efficiency in irrigation," he said.

D'Urso stressed the need for a capacity-building framework at every level, noting a missing link between the researchers who generate innovation and the farmers who are the end users — a gap that needs to be bridged by trained specialists who transfer knowledge to farmers and help them adopt strategies suited to their specific needs.

'The future of the planet depends on the farmers'

Noting that farmers are also entrepreneurs who need to earn income from their work, D'Urso said there is always a balance to be struck between personal income and public concerns such as protecting the environment and water resources.

"Trying to find the compromise between these issues without depressing farmers' income is a role of the politician as to be sustained in some way by adopting strategies, innovation that are able to make the farmer more resilient toward climate change. But also understand that he plays a role in this game, a very important role. And the future of the planet is also depending on him. So, putting this confidence in his hand will be extremely important," he said.