This edition highlights the value of the water resource, its management and efficient use, the impact of technologies, the protection of watersheds and the way we have to go. Colombia prides itself on its water wealth. However, in agribusiness activities we worry more when there is a shortage of water or when there is excess of it, being less reactive when the situation is relatively normal. If our actions were permanent, the consequences of drought and flooding could have a lower impact on both production and recovery costs.
Dear Readers:
This edition highlights the value of the water resource, its management and efficient use, the impact of technologies, the protection of watersheds and the way we have to go. Colombia prides itself on its water wealth. However, in agribusiness activities we worry more when there is a shortage of water or when there is excess of it, being less reactive when the situation is relatively normal. If our actions were permanent, the consequences of drought and flooding could have a lower impact on both production and recovery costs.
The efficient management of water in the flat area is related to both irrigation and drainage and the two depend heavily on the protection we have of the river basins that supply it with water. In relation to water sources in the mountain ranges, the watershed protection project, led by Asocaña with the technical support of Cenicaña, executes and guides actions whose results will be medium and long term. And in the flat part the sugarcane agribusiness sector executes actions with evident results in the best use of the water resource through the technologies and methodologies developed by Cenicaña, with the participation of the mills and the growers.
An example of this is the water balance for the programming of the irrigation, the validation of water conduction systems that favor its saving, methodologies for its measurement and application and the irrigation by reduced flow, among others. This has meant savings in the volumes of water applied between 40% -60% lower than those used 15 years ago.
The actions in relation to drainage are focused more today towards regional drainage than the specific one in a single farm. There is a model that is being implemented in the northern zone with the participation of the Risaralda sugar mill, its suppliers and Cenicaña. Although the solution is gradual, it will be of greater impact and in this sense Cenicaña promotes similar projects in the southern zone with the participation of the La Cabaña, Incauca, Mayagüez and Castilla mills.
The development of less demanding varieties of water obtained through conventional genetic improvement and biotechnology advances with promising results and we hope that in the short term they will be a significant complement to the efficient use of the resource in the field. Likewise, there are advances in sugar factories and distilleries that present indicators of the volume of water per finished product in accordance with the standards of international certifiers.
The challenge is to be more efficient in the use of water and to adopt available technologies in which Cenicaña is committed to its dissemination and training.
Álvaro Amaya Estevez
CEO, Cenicaña
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