"In some fields, it's already very dry. The situation is serious," warns Olivier Dauger, climate and energy referent at the national federation of farmers' unions (FNSEA).
Barely recovered from a summer of 2022 marked by a historic drought, and faced with an equally dry winter, farmers are preparing to once again have to deal with the lack of water and numerous restrictions.
On Saturday February 25, visiting for the inauguration of the International Agricultural Show in Paris, Emmanuel Macron called for "a sobriety plan on the water", on the model of "energy sobriety", evoking, once again, "the end of abundance".
"It is necessary that all of us - citizens, industrialists, services, local authorities, farmers - (pay) attention to this resource which is becoming rare" and "that we move towards behaviors of sobriety in our practices", further urged the President of the Republic.
"The situation is more serious than last year at the same time and we are two months late in recharging the groundwater", has, for his part,
On French territory, four departments are already experiencing water restrictions, in particular forcing farmers to reduce their withdrawals.
"It's a scenario that is being repeated more and more," laments Olivier Dauger, with a clear observation: "water is gradually becoming a rare commodity that we can no longer consume without limit."
"Today I want to be optimistic and hope that it rains in the spring and that the water tables recharge," the farmer continues.
"But that would only solve the problem in the short term. Today, it is urgent to change our practices to adapt to this new reality of water savings."
>> To read also: In Europe, a "winter heat wave" that upsets ecosystems
Modernize irrigation equipment
"In France, agriculture represents nearly 50% of water consumption", explains Sami Bouarfa, researcher at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae) and Deputy Director of the AQUA department.
In detail, out of an average of 200 billion m3 of water available per year in nature, 30 billion is withdrawn and 3.2 billion is intended for agriculture - far behind the cooling of power stations (more than 15 billion ) and the production of drinking water (5 billion).
"And the primary use of water in agriculture is crop irrigation," says the specialist.
"Even if the share of irrigated agriculture concerns only about 6% of the total cultivated areas."
For the specialist, the first lever of action to save blue gold thus lies in the tools used to irrigate the fields.
"In France, irrigation is still largely done by spraying. We could start by using more efficient equipment, with drip irrigation techniques and sensors and software that measure humidity levels in the soil, so as to know precisely when it is necessary to water, where, and in what quantity", he explains.
According to him, this measure alone would already make it possible to reduce agricultural water consumption by 20 to 30%.
Despite state and community aid, these tools can however be prohibitively expensive for farmers.
"This has a high and immediate cost which forces farmers to arbitrate between the benefit to be derived from it in the long term and the risks", notes Arnaud Reynaud, economist also director of research at Inrae.
"But the more the droughts will multiply, the more these investments will prove to be sources of benefits."
A new distribution of cultures
"But these techniques to save water will not be enough. We must, in parallel, transform our agricultural model", insists Sami Bouarfa, thus calling for greater crop diversification.
"The problem, currently, is that irrigation is practiced mostly in summer - when the water resource is weakest - to water corn", he continues.
"We therefore have every interest in developing crops that consume less water or that consume it at different times of the year."
It is with this in mind that, in recent years, the cultivation of sorghum, a cereal originating in Africa and more resistant to lack of water, has made its way into the French landscape.
The country has even become the leading European producer, with 122,000 hectares of cultivation, mainly located in Occitania and the Loire Valley.
"It's not a miracle cereal: it also needs water and remains just as subject to the vagaries of the weather, but it has the advantage of consuming less water and needing to be watered later than the corn, at the end of summer and beginning of autumn", nuance Sami Bouarfa.
"The challenge, behind, is to be able to create a real commercial sector. Because these cereals, it is necessary to sell them", nuance Olivier Dauger, of the FNSEA.
Today, the bet is successful for sorghum: on February 15, this cereal, which is mainly used for animal feed, was sold at 277 euros per ton on the markets, almost the price of corn, fixed at 283 euros.
To invite farmers to make this transition, Arnaud Reynaud offers more incentive state bonuses.
"We could very well imagine aid for diversification, which already exists, but conditioned by water savings", he explains.
"That would be more of an incentive than tax systems on water prices, as we see in the United States in particular, which are little taken into account by farmers."
"The first place of water storage is the ground"
Last lever mentioned by Sami Bouarfa: developing agroecology.
“We must not forget that the first place for storing water is the soil,” he insists.
"By plowing them less, by structuring them more, they will receive and store water more easily."
An objective that is combined with the democratization of agroforestry - which consists in protecting the soil, precisely, with the help of trees or hedges, to prevent the evaporation of water.
What, according to the specialist, also limit the risks associated with droughts for the vast majority of French farmers who depend on rainwater to water their farms.
Especially since, faced with global warming and the lack of rainfall, the latter are sometimes forced to resort to irrigation to save their yields.
A vicious circle.
"This summer, faced with the fall in their yields, some winegrowers in the south of France asked to be able to irrigate their vines, an unprecedented fact since their vines are supposed to be adapted to drought", illustrates Sami Bouarfa.
"In parallel with measures related to irrigation, it is therefore also essential to also adapt rainfed agriculture to drought to avoid this type of scenario."
Strive towards "resilience irrigation"
Faced with this observation, the some 60 new hydraulic works projects - including the controversial "mega-basins" - intended for agriculture which are to be commissioned by June, the government's flagship measure in the fight against drought, seem to run counter to these adaptation ambitions.
"What is certain is that storing water always has environmental consequences on the environment", continues Sami Bouarfa.
"On this question, real territorial consultations are needed, which take into account all the issues and uses. There is no 100% negative answer."
>> To read also: Behind the conflict over "megabasins", two opposing visions of agriculture in France
"But in the long term, what we must aim for is therefore towards an irrigation of resilience, which would be above all a tool for supporting and securing production", he concludes.
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