The average investment in irrigation rehabilitation is about 3000 euros per hectare. Moldova has about 1.5 million hectares of arable land. Using the average cost estimate made by the authorities, irrigating all these areas would theoretically require an investment of more than 4.5 billion euros, which is considered impossible under the current budget.
“We are not going to irrigate everything. Water is a limited resource and it must be used efficiently and responsibly,” Ludmila Catlabuga told bani.md .
The government is currently working on a comprehensive climate change resilience strategy that will avoid fragmentation of projects and link irrigation to the type of crops and specifics of territories. The authorities are considering both large-scale sprinkling and modern drip irrigation systems, depending on the crops grown and the availability of water resources.
Official data, however, show that the existing irrigated area is very small. Currently, only 35,000 hectares are considered suitable for irrigation, and this is underutilized. The effectively irrigated area is estimated at about 27,000 hectares, with some potential for expansion, a level that the authorities qualify as “initial”.
For her part, Olga Sainciuc, executive director of the Consolidated Directorate for the Implementation and Monitoring of Agricultural Projects, said that some specific projects will yield results only in 2027, when about 1,900 hectares of land in the north of the country will be irrigated, while another 2,600 hectares in Stefan Voda and 1,900 hectares in Briceni will receive investments supported by the World Bank. The cost of these projects reaches 40-90 million euros, depending on the technology used, estimated at 3,000 euros per hectare.
By comparison, before the collapse of the USSR, Moldova irrigated more than 300,000 hectares of land, almost ten times more than at present. The authorities recognize that rapid expansion of irrigation depends not only on financing, but also on mobilizing local communities, establishing water user associations and involving farmers in the development of technical projects.
The government program presented by Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu describes agriculture as “a strategic pillar of the economy” and irrigation expansion as a key promise. However, the stated target of 50,000 hectares of irrigated land would represent less than 3% of the country’s total agricultural land, a limited effect compared to the scale of the climate crisis.
