Verifiable Water Use Inventory Using
ICTs in Industrial Agriculture
Carmen M. Flores-Cayuela, Rafael González-Perea,
Emilio Camacho-Poyato, and Pilar Montesinos
Abstract Since the 1950s, the world’s population has increased by more than six
billion people. This exponential growth led to changes in the irrigated agricultural
sector, the world’s largest user of water resources (70%), focusing on increasing food
production to meet the growing needs of the population. With the green revolution,
“industrial agriculture” appeared, transferring some of the industrial production principles to the farming sector in order to reduce year-to-year variability in harvests and
increase production on a sustained basis. This has led to the specialization of farms in
a single product (monoculture), the technification and intensification of these farms
and the increase in the use of inputs. The digitalization of the agricultural sector,
through the implementation of cutting-edge technologies, allows for the optimization of the use of key resources such as water, whose scarcity has become one of
the most relevant and complex environmental global problems. Water consumption
data collected on site, using different technologies, provides a real and transparent
inventory of water use in irrigated crops. The water footprint obtained in accordance
with the ISO 14046 standard (within the LCA methodology), jointly with the irrigation management information, allows knowing accurately the efficiency in the use of
water of each crop production system. The installation of different devices to monitor
water use in greenhouse tomatoes and citrus groves has made it possible to collect and
quantify precisely the water used by these crops throughout the irrigation season.
C. M. Flores-Cayuela (B) · E. Camacho-Poyato · P. Montesinos
Department of Agronomy, University of Córdoba, Campus Rabanales, Edif. Da Vinci, 14071
Córdoba, Spain
e-mail: g02flcac@uco.es
E. Camacho-Poyato
e-mail: ecamacho@uco.es
P. Montesinos
e-mail: pmontesinos@uco.es
R. González-Perea
Department of Plant Production and Agricultural Technology, School of Advanced Agricultural
Engineering, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Campus Universitario, s/n, 0207 Albacete, Spain
e-mail: Rafael.GonzalezPerea@uclm.es
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
S. S. Muthu (ed.), Water Footprint, Environmental Footprints and Eco-design
of Products and Processes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4377-1_1
1
ICTs in Industrial Agriculture
Carmen M. Flores-Cayuela, Rafael González-Perea,
Emilio Camacho-Poyato, and Pilar Montesinos
Abstract Since the 1950s, the world’s population has increased by more than six
billion people. This exponential growth led to changes in the irrigated agricultural
sector, the world’s largest user of water resources (70%), focusing on increasing food
production to meet the growing needs of the population. With the green revolution,
“industrial agriculture” appeared, transferring some of the industrial production principles to the farming sector in order to reduce year-to-year variability in harvests and
increase production on a sustained basis. This has led to the specialization of farms in
a single product (monoculture), the technification and intensification of these farms
and the increase in the use of inputs. The digitalization of the agricultural sector,
through the implementation of cutting-edge technologies, allows for the optimization of the use of key resources such as water, whose scarcity has become one of
the most relevant and complex environmental global problems. Water consumption
data collected on site, using different technologies, provides a real and transparent
inventory of water use in irrigated crops. The water footprint obtained in accordance
with the ISO 14046 standard (within the LCA methodology), jointly with the irrigation management information, allows knowing accurately the efficiency in the use of
water of each crop production system. The installation of different devices to monitor
water use in greenhouse tomatoes and citrus groves has made it possible to collect and
quantify precisely the water used by these crops throughout the irrigation season.
C. M. Flores-Cayuela (B) · E. Camacho-Poyato · P. Montesinos
Department of Agronomy, University of Córdoba, Campus Rabanales, Edif. Da Vinci, 14071
Córdoba, Spain
e-mail: g02flcac@uco.es
E. Camacho-Poyato
e-mail: ecamacho@uco.es
P. Montesinos
e-mail: pmontesinos@uco.es
R. González-Perea
Department of Plant Production and Agricultural Technology, School of Advanced Agricultural
Engineering, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Campus Universitario, s/n, 0207 Albacete, Spain
e-mail: Rafael.GonzalezPerea@uclm.es
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
S. S. Muthu (ed.), Water Footprint, Environmental Footprints and Eco-design
of Products and Processes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4377-1_1
1