• In France, 12% of water resources are devoted to agriculture.

  • However, this summer's drought has wreaked havoc, highlighting the problem of watering and irrigating crops.

  • One plant has particularly suffered from the lack of water: the potato.

Eat or drink, will one day have to choose?

We are not there yet, but the question becomes less provocative when we know that 70% of water resources are devoted to agriculture in the world.

In France, the figure is 12%.

However, this summer's drought has wreaked havoc, highlighting the problem of watering and irrigating crops.

One plant has particularly suffered from the lack of water: the potato.

And with it, a region, Hauts-de-France, which is home to nearly two-thirds of national production.

The 2022 harvest, which is coming to an end, promises to be the lowest in the last 20 years in terms of yield, according to the National Union of Potato Producers (UNPT).

“worrying situation in the sector”

To the point that the president of the Hauts-de-France regional council, Xavier Bertrand, recently split a letter to the Minister of Agriculture, telling him “the worrying situation of the sector”.

And with climate change, that may just be the start.

"Certainly, it's a thorny issue, but we don't know what tomorrow will bring," puts Benoît Houilliez, head of potatoes at the regional chamber of agriculture, into perspective.

Last year, the concern focused more on an overflow of humidity and, consequently, on mildew.

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However, the drought problem seems to be setting in.

And the various prefectural alerts prove that the state of drought has persisted for three or four years and the water needs of potato producers are increasing from year to year.

And not just a little.

Between 2010 and 2020, we went from 30,000 to 44,000 irrigated hectares, an increase of 44%.

In addition, potato cultivation now accounts for half of the areas irrigated in the region.

Because the growers practice, in almost all cases, sprinkling.

"A guarantee against climatic hazards"

"It's a necessity" for Benoît Houilliez.

“Food manufacturers like McCain, who recover half of the production, are very demanding on the shape and variety of potatoes, he explains.

Watering helps control growth better and makes the crop more productive.

“And to clarify that” consumers are often just as demanding with the shape and appearance of the product.

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“Unlike other regions, we could still produce without irrigating in Hauts-de-France, but it is a guarantee against climatic hazards”, adds Jacques Blarel, head of the agro-environment pole at the chamber of agriculture. who believes that "it's not just a question of optimizing yields".

Except that, according to the Water Agency, managing water resources in a sustainable and responsible way has become a crucial issue, even in the North of France which, this year, remains on drought alert until the end november.

Much of the irrigation water is wasted

“We have to change cultural agricultural and irrigation practices to get out of it,” recognizes Claire Wittling, research engineer at the National Institute for Agronomic Research (Inrae), in Montpellier.

And not only for the potato which is not the most water-intensive plant, nor for Hauts-de-France whose 1,000 km² of irrigated areas represent only 4% of cultivated areas.

Solutions exist.

“More and more growers are equipped with probes which carry out a water balance of the plot, notes Jacques Blarel.

This helps to optimize the water supply”.

The technician from the chamber of agriculture is also campaigning for the installation of water retention in certain sectors.

A solution that is debating the sharing of the resource.

Because if irrigated crops are more productive, a large proportion of the water used is lost, with the practice of sprinkling.

More than half of the fresh water used in agronomy is wasted, according to the Ecosources.org website.

Prioritize “soil conservation agriculture”

“The most effective solution is drip, if possible buried in the ground 15 to 40 cm deep.

All the water ends up in the roots, there is no evaporation.

But the cost of installation, more than 3,000 euros per hectare, remains a brake”, assures Claire Wittling.

Inrae has been trying to improve this irrigation system for ten years.

For potatoes, the technique seems tedious to set up, according to technicians from the Chamber of Agriculture.

Same remark for the use of varieties which are more resistant to water stress, that is to say to the lack of water.

In terms of potatoes, Benoît Houilliez believes that we are "looking for the five-legged sheep", between "resistance to mildew", "desires of consumers" and "intransigence of industrial specifications".



There remains the development of “soil conservation agriculture” to “better use rainwater upstream of irrigation”, according to Claire Wittling.

“The idea is to increase the water storage capacity of the soil, by providing organic matter and avoiding leaving the soil bare.

Covering the soil with mulch or mulch also limits water evaporation”.

"This soil conservation technique was born in the 1930s in the United States at the time of the

dust bowl

, the desert of dust that had invaded the great central plains of the country", specifies the researcher.

At the time, already, the management of the water present in the soil had been disastrous.

The result had been years of drought and famine.

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