Agricultural Water Management 98 (2010) 377–384
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Agricultural Water Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat
Safe and high quality food production using low quality waters and improved
irrigation systems and management: SAFIR
Finn Plauborg
a,1
, Mathias N. Andersen
a,∗
, Fulai Liu
b
, Jeroen Ensink
c
, Ragab Ragab
d
a
Department of Agroecology and Environment, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, Postboks 50, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark
b
Department of Agriculture and Ecology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Copenhagen University, Denmark
c
Disease Control and Vector Biology Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
d
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, CEH, Wallingford, United Kingdom
article info
Article history:
Available online 19 November 2010
Keywords:
Water treatment
Membrane BioReactor
Deficit irrigation
Modeling
abstract
The present paper presents the SAFIR project (www.safir4eu.org), which addresses two fundamental
problems that over the past decade increasingly have become concerns of the general public: the one
problem being the jeopardizing of safety and quality of our food products, while the other being the
increasing competition for clean freshwater. The SAFIR project has a multi-disciplinary approach, which
integrates the European as well as the global dimension of the EU-policy on food quality and safety. The
main driving force behind the project idea is new research results that demonstrated that scheduled
uneven irrigation patterns can increase the water use efficiency as well as the quality of vegetable crops.
Furthermore, recent innovations in the water treatment and irrigation industry have shown potential for
the use of low quality water resources, such as reclaimed water or surface water in peri-urban agriculture,
for irrigation of vegetable crops without threaten food safety and quality. The results of SAFIR were
achieved from field experiments in Europe and China and modeling activities both at field and farm
scale. The present article describes the structure of the project and highlights the main findings and
recommendations of the project described in detail in already published papers and in accompanying
papers in this special issue.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The modern European consumer’s interest in high quality food
is increasing. There is currently a strong focus on food quality and
safety among scientific and other stakeholder organizations, e.g.
European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and Food Standards Agency
(FSA), which is also reflected in the formulation of food produc-
tion standards such as EurepGap (2004) and GlobalGap (2007). The
increasing competition in the world food market requires the food
industry to be highly productive and efficient. This has, however,
added a factor of stress and revealed vulnerable elements in the
European food production chain, e.g. BSE, Salmonella as well as
outbreaks of water borne diseases (EEA and WHO, 2002). Further-
more, the current development of the EU15 agricultural sector into
intensive and specialized (mono) agricultural production chains
may include a risk of loss of product quality. The enlargement of
the EU, with the inclusion of a large agricultural production in the
new member states and the participation in the CAP, may result in
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Finn.Plauborg@agrsci.dk (F. Plauborg),
MathiasN.Andersen@agrsci.dk (M.N. Andersen).
1
Tel.: +45 8999 1809.
structural changes where differences between advanced and less
developed agricultural production may result in less control of the
food production chain and the risk of a decrease in food safety and
quality.
The agricultural sector continues to have a negative impact on
the ecological status of the environment. In spite of reductions in
fertilizer use (EEA, 2003), loss of nitrogen and phosphorous from
the farmers’ fields together with, e.g. faecal contaminants and pes-
ticides impose a threat to surface and ground waters, and in the end
to the European consumer (EEA, 2003). The European Water Frame-
work Directive (WFD, 2000) is an important step towards sustain-
able development. However, its implementation may also increase
the competition from various sectors on high quality waters and
challenge the quality and size of the European agricultural produc-
tion (e.g. ALTERRA, LEI, ASG (2004)). The use of irrigation in the
Mediterranean food production sector still increases (EEA, 2003). It
is foreseen that the WFD together with the effects of future climate
changes with expected decreasing precipitation (EEA, 2003) in Cen-
tral and Mediterranean may force this sector into an unfavourable
competitive position in the global food market. In addition, cli-
mate change is likely to increase the spread of vector-, food- and
water-borne infections considerably (EEA, 2003).
Clean freshwater is a limited resource and its use for crop
irrigation is in fierce competition with the demand for house-
0378-3774/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2010.05.020