TEHRAN – Iran is implementing 110 pilot smart irrigation projects covering about 10,000 hectares nationwide as part of a broader push to boost water efficiency and deploy renewable energy in agriculture, a deputy agriculture minister said.

Safdar Niyazi Shahraki, deputy for water and soil affairs at the Agriculture Ministry, told IRNA the projects, now in their third year, are being carried out across nearly all provinces and will be expanded nationwide once completed.

He said the ministry is also planning to equip around 230,000 electric agricultural wells and nearly 200,000 diesel-powered wells with solar panels, creating what he described as significant capacity for the development of solar energy in rural areas.

Niyazi said the ministry is advancing the use of artificial intelligence in irrigation management, internet-of-things applications on farms, satellite imagery for crop monitoring, national water and soil databases and digital soil mapping, alongside efforts to modernize water transfer networks and develop agricultural decision-support platforms.

He added that subsurface irrigation projects have begun in Khuzestan, Kerman, Khorasan and Ardabil provinces under targets set in Iran’s seven-year development plan, though funding constraints remain a key challenge.

On energy, Niyazi said the government has earmarked 20 trillion tomans, equivalent to about $400 million, for solar panel deployment in agriculture, with an engineering body designated to oversee implementation. He noted that access to bank financing, originally expected to reach 10 trillion tomans, has yet to materialize.

Niyazi said meeting the agriculture-related targets of the development plan – including annual installation of 200,000 hectares of modern irrigation systems and large-scale drainage, canal rehabilitation and soil studies – would require about 175 trillion tomans ($3.5 billion) in funding per year, of which only a limited portion has so far been secured.

With drought intensifying and water resources shrinking, he said improving water-use efficiency in agriculture has become increasingly critical as some agricultural water is diverted to meet drinking water needs.

EF/MA