Valencia’s medieval garden changes the blackboard for mobile phones to irrigate

The city is advancing inexorably and is already hot on the heels of a piece of public garden that survives in the south of the city. Salvador Tamarit, 64, belongs to the fifth generation of a family of farmers who have grown their vegetables – in his case for self-consumption and little else – in this historic fertile strip known as Francs, marjals i extremals, founded in medieval times outside the domains of the Water Tribunal, on which most of the productive garden depends. When Tamarit wants to water his garden, located a stone’s throw from the modern and futuristic City of Arts and Sciences, he signs up on a board to ask for an appointment. It is an ancestral custom. However, in September, the Department of Innovation, led by Paula Llobet, will test an application designed by two startups that, through a softwareoptical fibre and sensors, will allow farmers to plan irrigation using a mobile phone application. It is a pilot experience that, if successful, could be extended to other orchard areas.

“We have had many problems precisely because of the lack of water,” confesses Tamarit, a pensioner who now spends his free time growing chard, potatoes, garrofón or tomatoes in the Font de Sant Lluís vegetable garden. Two years ago, after years of insistence, the council activated an artificial irrigation well, which receives water from the nearby Anzuelos fountain, created to reduce the water table and prevent the tunnel below from flooding. This water is reused and irrigates the plots of this garden free of charge. The motor is put into operation every Wednesday and Thursday from 6 to 10 or 11 in the morning and the farmers water their fields in the strict shifts indicated on the board. On Saturdays, irrigation is also carried out, but the water supply comes from another source.

On the road to En Corts there is a blackboard where the irrigators ask for their turn. Depending on where they have their plot, they get one day or another of the week. If Salvador is on the list but there is someone in front of him who has to irrigate at the very end, he has to wait for him to finish. And when he cuts at his height, all the water at the bottom is lost. “There is little orchard left and what is left is practically lost. There are older people who still support it but the generations to come will not take over,” Tamarit explains realistically.

His grandparents’ grandparents were born in a nearby farmhouse. They had 22 hanegadas (about 800 square metres) back then, which have now been reduced to five and the three siblings share it to plant garrofón, pumpkins, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, chard and other seasonal vegetables. His parents have still lived off the land, but today it is unthinkable. His parents went to the Tira de Contar in Mercavalencia – where farmers sold their produce directly – but today there are a lot of requirements to place these more residual productions of part-time, non-professional farmers. “To sell two boxes of tomatoes it is not worth it,” he says sincerely. He stays on the ground because “I am a masochist but I have been taught at home and I feel bad that this is lost,” he adds while boasting that the flavour and smell of his tomatoes “has nothing to do with those sold out there.”

Two startups The Valencian companies —Baukunst and Fibsen—, from the municipal innovation foundation, set out at the beginning of 2023 to improve the irrigation system, with a greater use of water and a reduction in waiting times for irrigation, and they laid optical fibre through part of the irrigation ditches. In September they will activate an application where farmers can sign up and request an appointment. “The aim of the system is to ensure that we do not waste water, something I totally agree with,” says Tamarit.

“The startups They want us, for example, to sign up through the app, which will tell us in real time ‘you have 10 minutes left until the water arrives, the plot you have has been irrigated for 12 minutes or you have consumed 2,000 liters of water’. It will be complicated because the people who remain in this orchard are older and do not handle technology,” he adds. He recognizes that access to and distribution of water is a problem and remembers from when he was a child the bitter disputes between neighbors over water for irrigation. “I laugh at what Blasco Ibáñez’s novels tell,” jokes the Valencian writer who has best portrayed the lights and shadows of the orchard and the inhabitants of the Albufera de Valencia.

“We are a kind of guinea pigs for the system,” he smiles. The application includes an intuitive and visual control panel to continuously monitor the key performance indicators of the water network, which can be consulted on mobile devices. “Anything that involves progress in the garden, which has been forgotten by everyone, is a good idea,” he says.

For Adolfo Ibáñez Vila, from the Baukunst firm (in charge of the software), the project has been very interesting because it has allowed them to learn about reality. “The orchard has been in sharp decline in recent years and the farming population is being lost because there is no generational change. In addition, a lot of water is being lost because traditional techniques are still being used that use much more than necessary.” [se riega por inundación o a manta]“When we spoke to them, we saw that one of the reasons they abandoned their fields was that they spent a lot of time waiting for the water to arrive to irrigate, so we digitalised the custom of the blackboards so they know who is going to irrigate and their mobile phone notifies them when it is their turn. It is a scheduling of irrigation through new technologies. It also avoids many disputes,” adds Ibáñez.

The pilot project affects around twenty farmers, most of them between 65 and 70 years old, who rent or have usufruct of the plots and cultivate them for pleasure, for their subsistence. There is little economic exploitation in the public garden of Francs i marjals. “We had planned to activate the application via email, but when interviewing the farmers we realised that only 15% had one,” adds the spokesman for Baukunst. For this reason they have had to change the entire registration system and will do so via mobile phones.

“We want to extend this project to the whole of Valencia’s orchards because with climate change and the water cuts this summer in the Turia River, we could make life a little easier for farmers,” he adds. The thousand-year-old Water Tribunal is aware of the initiative and is awaiting the results.