REDUCING THE IMPACT ON WATER

Water is an essential resource. In some parts of the world, including Switzerland, water resources are beset by conflicting demands from sectors such as household consumption, agricultural irrigation and artificial snow production in ski resorts.

Several Swiss companies have already come up with ways to ensure that water is used sustainably. One of these is AQUA4D, based at the Daval Ecopark in Sierre (Canton of Valais), which is developing a water treatment unit for use on large farms. This device uses no chemicals and provides savings of up to 30% in irrigation water. It also ensures better assimilation of minerals by the plants and reduces the number of nematodes, the tiny parasitic worms that affect the plant roots (see page 82). AQUA4D’s solution is a comprehensive one that can for example be used to measure crop growth by drawing on a whole battery of indicators collected from separate sensors measuring variables such as humidity, salinity and temperature.

Hydrosolutions (Canton of Zurich) specialises in water management for agricultural irrigation, focusing on its use in arid regions. The company creates tailor-made solutions by working with local stakeholders and making use of mobile and web-based communications technology, which provides farmers in these regions with all the essentials they need to manage their water resources. Agroscope, Switzerland’s flagship agricultural research institution, has developed the Agrometeo website7 for use by farmers. In just a few clicks, users can, for example, access a full hydrological assessment of their agricultural land (see page 75).

The KLS filter developed by RWB Groupe (Canton of Jura) is used to treat water in areas that are not connected to a drinking water system. This device, which contains bauxite, makes use of slow-sand-filtration and gravel-filtration technology. Easy to maintain and particularly suitable for remote farms, this filter can treat up to 30,000 litres of water a day. The technology is manufactured in partnership with the water company Etertub (Canton of Glarus).