To initiate and strengthen European cooperation between associations and agri-food companies, encouraging the pooling of knowledge and practices in order to take action on water resources and equip ourselves to meet the growing challenges of water stress and climate change. Raise the awareness of players in the sector to make them more responsible and commit them to better management of water resources, and train them to rationalise consumption, reduce pollution and reuse wastewater using our educational tools (project deliverables). Discover and identify, through technical visits, strategies for more efficient management of water resources through innovative solutions, tools and best practices implemented by companies to reduce withdrawals/discharges into the natural environment, optimise consumption at the main consumption points - process and cleaning - and improve water quality. Establish a solid basis for future projects.
In recent years, as a result of global warming, agri-food businesses have had to contend with increasingly long and frequent periods of drought, prompting public authorities to require them to take less water from the natural environment: such measures could lead to a reduction in production volumes or even a complete halt to operations. Although companies' awareness of environmental issues has been growing in recent years, it remains uneven, depending on their size and the region in which they are based. The drought of 2022 was a real catalyst for initiating a structural change in water management by agri-food companies: surveys carried out among companies in Nouvelle-Aquitaine (NA) and Brittany had highlighted the need for companies to reduce their dependence on water resources - identified as high, even very high - and to implement actions enabling them to take less water from nature and consume it more efficiently: solutions identified as part of the activities of the DROP project.