The Project

C2. Socio-economic impact. Coordinator: NEIKER

To make DSTs available to farmers for their farming practices, thereby allowing farmers to be economically more competitive whilst adopting sustainable practices, minimising the environmental impact of the same. This is an objective being conducted in the rural environment.

The DSTs will have an impact on the three facets of conventional "farming activity":

The food production function
The natural values and landscape which form part of the farming activity.
The mobilisation and use of resources (knowledge, water, soil, labour, capital, etc.) in order to make it possible to guide the farm's objectives.

To monitor the project effectiveness.
- The use of fertilisers and biocides, measuring the content of P in the soil, NO3- in waters; that of individual pesticides and total pesticides.
- Soil conditioning, through the SOM (Soil Organic Matter) which is related to the soil structure, water holding capacity, etc.
- Soil salinization, the risk of salinization is determined by controlling the EC of the soil and waters.
- Aquifer improvement and Sustainable Water Use, through a reduction in the use of water.
The premise is the fact that the quantification of the information through the CMU permits the transfer of the information to a farm level, within its corresponding agroclimatic zone, since the aim is to construct DSTs that incorporate solutions for variability, rather than DSTs that are solely for regional or local use.
Therefore, to facilitate compliance with the objectives, the socio-economic characteristics of the sector and of each of the regions involved in the project, need to be determined through the analysis of a number of data sources:
- Demographic characteristics of the agricultural sector.
- Farming structure: individual or in partnership
- Existing information and advisory services
- The extent of use of Information and Communication Tools (ICTs)
- Access and use of INTERNET in the region and in the agricultural sector, etc.