Land leveling: a viable option for efficient use and sustainable water management in agriculture

Abstract

The increase of the population and the demand of the water for urban use as for the industrial use is increasing; according to the FAO, for agricultural use it is around 72% and 28% for urban use. So in a very short time this will lead to a problem of water shortage. Since agriculture demands more water and in Mexico only 18% of the cultivated area has irrigation infrastructure, for such cases, gravity irrigation has efficiencies around 45% and pressurized plants are above 90%; converting irrigation systems by gravity to pressurized irrigation systems and improving irrigation by gravity are viable options for efficient use and sustainable water management. The latter can be achieved through land leveling, channel lining, replacement of channels by pipelines and design and proper management of parcel irrigation. Land leveling aims to solve problems of low application efficiency and poor irrigation uniformity caused by topographic irregularities. With the use of traditional technology and/or laser technology it is possible to achieve leveling the agricultural land with high precision and this allows a water advance more evenly, vertically and horizontally, which achieves irrigation efficiencies up to 85%.