Technologies for the rational use of water in Brazilian agriculture

Resumen

Brazil is the country with the highest water availability in the world. Adding to the flow of all the rivers on the planet, almost 20% of the total flow on Brazilian soil. Being an essentially agricultural country, using irrigated agriculture, the main consumer of water resources (about 70% of the world consumption) also has one of the largest herds of pigs, poultry and cattle. In this scenario, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation - Embrapa, as the largest and most important public institution of Brazilian agricultural research, has made efforts in trying to find solutions or at least minimize the impacts caused by the scarcity and pollution of resources water, by developing environmental technologies. This paper describes the technologies offered by this institution for the different regions. For this, research, exploratory and historical content analysis of publications and data obtained to the various units of Embrapa developing research focused on this theme was developed. The results show that despite the intensification of research by the institution, it is necessary to consider that the water scarcity problem and the increasing pollution of both shallow as the deep wells is complex and there is no short-term solution. Another aggravating factor is that the pace of growth in both industrial activities such as farming and its negative impacts is much greater than the generated technologies, demonstrating the difficulty in finding a balance in this relationship.