Water, European Union funding, an ageing population, and the ability, or inability, to invest will be the main determining factors for the future of agriculture in the Algarve over the next decade, this was the message of a seminar in Lagoa this week, gathering 100 farmers, public officials, business representatives, and agricultural organisations gathered to discuss ‘The Future of Algarve Agriculture in the Next Decade’.
The event, held at the Convent of São José and attended by Portugal’s Agriculture and Maritime Affairs Minister José Manuel Fernandes, offered a glimpse of the difficult choices facing the region, with agriculture, tourism, population growth, and the environment discussed as forces increasingly competing for the same resources.
Organised by the Algarve Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR), as part of FATACIL 2026 and its “Love the Land” programme, the seminar was ostensibly about planning for the future. However, much of the discussion inevitably came back to a problem that has become almost impossible to avoid in the Algarve: there simply is not enough water to sustain every ambition placed upon the region. Moreover, freakishly wet winters such as the last cannot be relied upon, as they are erratic by nature.
At the opening session, attended by Lagoa mayor Luís Encarnação and CCDR Algarve president José Apolinário, water emerged immediately as one of the defining concerns. Apolinário called for a dedicated regional chapter within the EU's 2028–34 financial framework and argued that regional agricultural services should have greater responsibility for water management. His speech also underlined something that is sometimes lost in the Algarve's popular image of golf courses, poolside sun-loungers, and beaches: that is that agriculture is an increasingly significant part of the regional economy.
Minister José Manuel Fernandes likewise placed water at the forefront of his interventions, recognising the considerable efforts farmers have already made to improve efficiency, a point that matters in a region where agriculture is often portrayed as the voracious consumer of water.
However, water, he said, cannot be managed as though agriculture were the only claimant. Public supply, tourism, industry, civil protection, and environmental sustainability all have legitimate demands. Every new hotel, every holidaymaker, every hectare of productive farmland, and every dry summer adds another layer of pressure to a crucial resource whose limits are currently not under strain, but risk becoming threadbare over the coming years.
Fernandes highlighted the Água que Une (“Water that Unites”) project, describing it as “strategic and structuring”. Strengthening infrastructure and increasing availability, he argued, would give investors greater certainty. Businesses are reluctant to invest heavily when the basic resource on which their operations depend cannot be guaranteed.
There is also a question that deserves to be asked: what happens when greater water availability makes further growth possible, in a place that, at times, struggles with the consequences of growth?
Fernandes pointed to the scale of public investment currently under way in the Algarve in agriculture, the environment, and water resources, including projects he visited that morning, such as the €15m modernisation of the Bravura irrigation network. The minister argued that such investment should be viewed as an instrument of economic and territorial development. After all, agriculture, and the wider agro-industry, contribute to employment and wealth creation.
Another major question that lingered over the seminar was what happens to European agricultural funding after 2027. Fernandes argued for a seven-year financial framework covering 2028 to 2034, saying that a longer horizon would provide greater stability and predictability for agricultural policy, and for the investments made by farmers and businesses.
He also called for a strong Common Agricultural Policy, and, crucially, one that remains genuinely European.
The warning was levied at any attempt to shift too much responsibility for agricultural funding towards national budgets. Such a move, he argued, could produce widely differing levels of support between member states, and distort competition within the European single market.
For the Algarve, farming already operates on the knife-edge between high-value production, expensive inputs, climate risk, and the need for substantial upfront investment. If access to European support becomes less predictable, the farmers best placed to absorb the shock are likely to be the largest and most financially secure.
The minister also called for a balance between ambition and the ability to deliver. Targets should be ambitious, but they must also be “realistic” and compatible with the capacity to implement them. Otherwise, overly demanding objectives risk leaving European money unused.
Fernandes also called for academic research to be more closely connected to the practical problems faced by farmers, with greater emphasis on finding treatments, protective measures, and solutions that can actually reach producers. For growers confronting higher temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and unfamiliar pests moving northwards as temperatures rise year-on-year, a scientific breakthrough is of limited value if it takes years to reach the field.
Despite the seminar focusing largely on EU policy, funding, regional management of water resources, and climate, one of the most critical issues over the coming years is likely to be that of the much-needed absorption of young people into agriculture, whether that be by immigration, educational initiatives, Government incentives, or otherwise. A young person deciding whether to enter farming needs access to land and capital, but also confidence that water will be available, that markets will reward production, and that public policy will not change beneath their feet. An established farmer considering investment in new technology needs the same certainty, mind you.
The real challenge is making sure that, ten or twenty years from now, there is still a sufficiently young resilient farming community with which to have conversations on the matter. The Algarve's agricultural future will not be secured by water alone, nor by EU cash injections.
Source: Sul Informação
Photo credit: Sul Informação
