Defra mulls smarter way to abstract water - farmers weekly

SMARTPHONE TECHNOLOGY COULD BE USED TO HELP FARMERS MANAGE ABSTRACTION LICENCES, BELIEVES A KEY CONTRIBUTOR TO THE GOVERNMENT’S WATER WHITE PAPER. Licences and the pricing system must be

more responsive to water availability, said Henry Leveson-Gower, DEFRA’s head of future water resource management policy. “The amount of water you will be able to abstract will vary based on

how much water is actually there,” he said. Future metering systems could be see farmers using smartphones to report their water usage direct to the Environment Agency and find out their

water allowance limits for the coming week, suggested Mr Leveson-Gower. “You would then decide whether to use that allowance or to trade it and you would be able to type into your smartphone

the potential price you would be willing to buy or sell water at,” he told growers. “It is a future that would be smarter and more flexible.” DEFRA was also considering a policy that would

allow farmers with reservoirs to release water into rivers and sell it to farmers who were abstractors downstream. “All of this could be done with the sort of technological support at

hopefully a reasonable price.” “Everyone has a mobile phone and probably in 10 years time most people will have smartphones. All of these sort of technological advances we want to harness to

move to a system that looks a bit more 21st century.” Smartphone technology could also be used to pay farmers to abstract and store water during wetter winter months. “In the summer, you

would have to pay, but you could imagine a system where over the year it was revenue neutral.” A draft Water Bill to implement measures contained in the Water White Paper is expected in the

coming months. A reformed water abstraction regime, as signalled in the Natural Environment White Paper, will be introduced in the longer term.