One of the most discussed topics of recent months is drought and the effort to retain water in the landscape. The whole country has been facing a long-term drought for the past five years. According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, in some areas there are differences in water volume up to 1000 m3. That is why every initiative by the ministries of environment and agriculture, which are trying to combat drought, is welcome. Last week, news "teed" into the media that the government had released a billion crowns to fight the drought. But is there anything to be over?
The billion-dollar investment by the state mainly provides for support for the construction of various water works. Specifically, these are the following 4 points:
– Support for the construction and technical evaluation of water supply and sewerage infrastructure,
– Interconnection of water systems,
– Support for measures on small watercourses, ponds and small reservoirs,
– Support for the construction of flood protection measures.
As the leading Czech hydrologist Professor Jánský confirms, our ancestors have been building various small or larger dams for hundreds of years and thanks to them we owe it to the fact that we still have some water in the landscape at present. Dams and other types of water cannons certainly have their justification, but what does this mean for farmers and are the dams really practical in the torrential rains that have swept through the Czech Republic in recent days?
In recent months, Czech farmers have faced mainly changes in the area of their own field, where any erosion-dangerous crop on erosion-endangered soil can be grown with soil protection measures or must be divided by intermittent belts, etc. From next year, the field sown or planted with one crop of an area of more than 30ha will not be able to do so, which therefore applies to winters already sown this year. The aim of this law is therefore not to retain water until the valley, where already contaminated ones wash up, but to create essentially natural dams in the fields using various crops in larger fields, intermittent strips, draws and division of fields. Thanks to this law, Czech agriculture has been going through a quiet revolution since the middle of last year, which is not much talked about in the media.
Unfortunately, farmers often do not have the necessary support in a single policy that would allow them, for example, to digitise in an organised way, which would make it much easier for them to work on measuring changes for the creation of an approved field. The digitisation of the land fund is one of the ways in which the Ministry should go, and current government policy still does not sufficiently address the topic in its proposals.
A change in the composition of forests, an increase in the proportion of non-forest greenery that helps retain much-needed moisture in the soil, would certainly deserve a similar investment and attention to water works. This is also related to greater investment in the formation of wetlands, coves or return of flows to their original state (i.e. formation of nivs or meanders). If the Ministry of Agriculture extended its intention beyond water works to the overall reclamation of the landscape, including support for the digitisation of the land fund, it would certainly benefit not only animals, plants, but also farmers and residents of this country. This issue is so complex that it cannot be viewed from just one point of view, even if the initiative itself is valued. So in a few years we will talk about a unique step or the beginning of an overall revival of the Czech landscape?