Water pricing and irrigation across Europe: opportunities and constraints for adopting irrigation scheduling decision support systems

Despite the plethora of irrigation scheduling decision support systems that have been developed over the past decades, there is little evidence of widespread adoption by farmers. This paper investigates the structural, institutional and political rigidities that affect the adoption of irrigation scheduling technologies in southern European countries and highlights the corresponding opportunities. The recent implementation of water pricing policies, as required under the European Water Framework Directive, could motivate farmers to invest in technologies for improving water management. A review of irrigation water prices in southern Europe found a large range of prices both within and between countries, from 0.054 – 0.645 € /m 3 (Greece) to 0.23 – 1.50 € /m 3 (France). However, inadequate monitoring infrastructure and a lack of political will to impose the new water prices are giving a mixed signal to farmers. An ageing and poorly trained farm population, small farm size and low level of farm investment also impede the uptake of irrigation technologies. Within this context, European-funded research needs to consider these constraints and pay closer attention to the conversion of knowledge and innovation into successful commercial products.


INTRODUCTION
Water resources efficiency gained policy significance in Europe with the adoption of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC. The WFD promotes the efficient use of water resources by urging users to be responsible for the costs their activities impose on water resources. Irrigation is the largest water user in the EU and exhibits great variability, increasing from the temperate climates of the north to the semi-arid climates of the south. The share of irrigated land in the total utilized agricultural area in EU-27 is 6.7%. The EU's irrigated area is mainly concentrated in the Mediterranean region, accounting for 8.49 million ha or 85% of the total EU-27 irrigated land. Irrigation is an indispensable input for Mediterranean agriculture and as a result a large share of the water abstracted is used for agricultural purposes (e.g. Greece 88%, Spain 64%) (Eurostat ). Climate change is expected to stress the limited water resources of the Mediterranean countries even further, while the escalating demand for water from other economic sectors with higher economic water productivity is already exerting high pressures on irrigation water uses (Milano et al. ).
To achieve a water-efficient agricultural sector, new technologies and best practices need to be adopted. Irrigation scheduling decision support systems (IS-DSS) are computer-based tools that provide advice on when and how much to irrigate. Numerous IS-DSS have been developed in the last decades (Rinaldi & He ). However, despite the successful application of IS-DSS in some parts of southern Europe, such as Irrinet IS-DSS, which is currently applied in 12,500 parcels in Italy (Mannini et al. ), there is little evidence in the literature of widespread adoption by farmers.
Within this context, the objectives of this paper are: (a) to present an overview of the advances and use of IS-DSS; (b) to review the current status of water pricing in southern Europe; (c) to improve our understanding of the opportunities and constraints for the adoption of IS-DSS.

IRRIGATION SCHEDULING DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS AND SERVICES Irrigation scheduling decision support research projects
Knowledge for the development of technical innovations for irrigation water management in EU countries is partly generated by EU funds. The European research community has put much effort into providing innovative technologies and DSS to support the implementation of water resources management under the WFD. There have been 10 EU funded projects (two still running) in the last 10 years, according to the Community Research and Development Information Service Database (http://cordis.europa.eu) ( Table 1). The websites of most of these projects report notable water savings and production increases. The projects have also advanced into crop modelling and yield optimization (e.g. FIGARO) and the consideration of the energy efficiency of irrigation (WEAM4i), applying the so-called waterenergy nexus approach.
However, EU-funded research has not always succeeded in converting research outputs into marketable products and commercial success stories. Research activities seem often more researcher-driven than farmer-driven and very few projects, two out of the 10, have developed business plans to commercialize their research innovations. In some cases, the research may not be ready for the market yet.
For example, the Earth Observation products for irrigation water management developed by the PLEIADeS project (D'Urso et al. ) were still at a stage of technical testing rather than farmer application. In this sense, the European Commission aims to improve the transfer of research knowledge and results to intended users in Horizon 2020 projects, by identifying the technology readiness level towards commercial use of proposed research products.
Application of irrigation scheduling decision support services There are several organizations that provide irrigation scheduling advice in the EU, either governmental or commercial. Irrinet, a web-based irrigation scheduling tool, is co-funded by the Emilia-Romagna regional government. It aims to ensure an efficient use of water resources in the agricultural sector and provides real-time irrigation scheduling (Mannini et al. ). Currently, services are available in selected areas in 11 regions in Italy (www.irriframe.it).
In Spain, large investments have been made in irrigation advisory services. The provincial government in Albacete Several companies in the EU now also provide irrigation scheduling support systems (e.g. www.netsens.it; www. dacom.nl). These systems generally include wireless soil moisture sensors, a rain gauge or weather station and display data and advice to farmers through a web-interface or mobile App. Some of these systems can also control the opening and closing of irrigation valves.

WATER PRICING IN EUROPE
The sustainable use of water resources and the viability of farming depend largely on the efficient use of agricultural water. In this perspective, the WFD (Article 9) highlights the role of economic principles, i.e. full cost recovery and polluter-pays principle, and economic instruments, i.e.  which concerns the recovery of the costs of water services, the water pricing policy and the application of the polluter-pays principle to water users (ECJ ). The ECJ found that 'Member States may, subject to certain conditions, opt not to proceed with the recovery of costs for a

IRRIGATION SCHEDULING TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS
The European Commission's intention to use the required cost recovery of water services as an incentive to invest in water saving technologies has not been achieved, due to the complexities surrounding irrigation water pricing in Europe.
Furthermore, there are several technical factors that impede the uptake of IS-DSS. These include poor system design and inadequate marketing and dissemination (Morrison ).

IS-DSS often suffer from a limited understanding of farmers'
needs and use terminology and logic that are unfamiliar to farmers. Furthermore, many farmers are not used to consulting computers and the Internet for daily decision making. In this sense, the research community is currently putting much effort into representing stakeholders' perspectives in the design of these tools (Rinaldi & He ).
Other explanation for the low adoption rate of IS-DSS is found that significant increase in water-use efficiency would not have been possible without public subsidies.
They also noted that these water savings have in turn led to a significant decrease in the percentage of cost recovered.
The European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development