Experiences of desalination for agriculture in Spain: technology, economy and innovation.

Food security is one of the main challenges for the future. Expectations from UN indicate that it is necessary to double food production in the next years. This means that water needs will grow more than expected and the use of the non-conventional water resources will be absolutely crucial. Desalination for agriculture is almost irrelevant globally, although countries such as Spain have demonstrated that desalination can be used for supplying an agriculture based on high added value crops. In this paper we will analyze this application with the experiences and knowledge acquired in the last years, including the history of desalination for agriculture, technical and economic aspects, success stories and innovation. It is also remarkable that farmers from the Southeast of Spain (Mediterranean Coast) have established a very efficient irrigation system which is fed by a blending of water from different origins obtaining in this way a good quality water with affordable prices. In the field of innovation, 2 main projects related with agriculture will be shown; LIFE DESEACROP, which was developed to demonstrated the feasibility of the use of desalinated water for agriculture and SOS-AGUA-XXI, a 6 Million € R&D project funded by Spanish Government with European Funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]