Avance y repercusión del regadío sostenible en las zonas rurales de Alicante: reto y oportunidades

The only productive, profitable, exporting, employment-generating and population-establishing agriculture in the rural milieu of the Alicante province is that of irrigated crops, which need a guarantee of water, in terms of both quantity and quality. The Common Agricultural Policy of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 had as its aim to create a productive and productivist agriculture that could ensure food supply through family-run exploitations and reasonable prices. This policy has transformed food shortage into surpluses, generating an environmental impact due to the excessive and inappropriate use of fertilisers and pesticides that have affected the soil and the water. This productivist agriculture model was applied until 1992. The alternative to the productivist model stems from the new paradigm of sustainable development, which integrates economic growth with environmental protection and social equity. Agriculture continues to be the essential foundation of economic activity, and of the social fabric, in most rural areas. This has a number of objective, advantageous conditions which, together with the use of more advanced farming techniques (greenhouses, localised irrigation, efficiency, regeneration of treated waters and desalination) make agriculture sustainable. A new agriculture which represents a challenge, and at the same time an opportunity, to become the driving force for economic, social and environmental development, even though it does not bring a final solution that can do away with the problems of territorial imbalance existing between the comarcas of the Alicante province.