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Evolution and new experiences of water saving in olive groves with DeepDrop®.
In December 2023, we presented a first article on our customers’ experiences with DeepDrop® in olive orchards, which allowed us to present this efficient irrigation system in one of the most important agricultural sectors in Spain. We have witnessed how in our country there have been too many places where olive oil production has suffered a substantial drop due to drought. For example, in Almeria last year there was a 41% drop in production compared to the previous year’s campaign. This has had an impact on the rise in olive oil prices: in the last three years, prices have risen by up to 300%.
There are more factors that explain this price increase, but obviously drought is one of them. And despite the fact that it rained in the fall of 2024, the problem is that the olive tree blooms on the previous year’s growths. And in 2023 the lack of rainfall was also very evident.
That is why strategies for better water management are understood as absolutely necessary to address and urgently. In this sense, the DeepDrop® irrigation system appears as one of the simplest and most efficient alternatives on the market, achieving an average of 40 to 70% water savings.
We talked to some of the customers who shared their experience with us last year to find out how the subway and localized irrigation system is working for them now, and also with new customers to find out how they have experienced the incorporation of DeepDrop® on their farms.
Farms belonging to oil cooperatives
Pepe from Finca Martilla belonging to the San Lorenzo de Zagra Cooperative, tells us that he continues with the devices and that he is preparing an extension of 2 more hectares to which he plans to put the DeepDrop® subway irrigation system, because he is very happy with the results. Let’s remember that with the subway dripper he reduced by 50% the need of water and he could see the results in less than 3 months, changing the irrigation in this way:
| Previous irrigation | DeepDrop® irrigation |
| 3 drippers per olive tree 8l/h | 3 drippers per olive tree 4l/h |
Raúl Matrera has 900 olive trees spread over two farms in the municipality of Córdoba. He belongs to the Cooperativa de Nuestra Señora de la Consolación de Doña Mencía.
It has a limestone soil and its olive trees are of the picual variety.
Last year he installed DeepDrop® on 400 of his olive trees. Having olive trees with these subway and localized irrigation devices, and others with surface drippers, he can see clear differences. Having very little water, Raul says that the olive trees before having DeepDrop® in place “did not take too much water”. Now, he has observed that “the size of the olives is bigger and they are healthier. In addition, the leaves of the trees are greener”. Having olive trees, with surface irrigation, with DeepDrop® and without irrigation he can see that “the humidity is maintained much more in soils where the DeepDrop® irrigation system is installed than in those where there is surface drip irrigation.” Next year, he plans to incorporate liquid fertilizer through DeepDrop® as this is another advantage he sees in this device.
Organic olive grove farms
Andrés has a farm of 1,500 olive trees in which he practices organic farming. Last year he had installed DeepDrop® on 333 of his olive trees, obtaining a 56.7% water saving. He anticipated this and has now installed DeepDrop® on his 1,500 olive trees, which he divides into sectors. Each sector is irrigated 1h30 per day from May to September.
| Previous irrigation | DeepDrop® irrigation |
| In-line drippers 2l/h
Irrigation 5h/day |
1 DeepDrop® 4l/h
Irrigation 1h30/day |
Sergio has a farm of organic olive trees in the municipality of Campillo del Río in Jaén where he has 1,000 olive trees. He has had the DeepDrop® system installed in them for two years. A device of 8l/h per olive tree. The type of soil he has is silt loam with stones.
Since incorporating DeepDrop® into his olive trees, these are the savings he has made:
- It has reduced water consumption by 50%.
- It has reduced the energy consumption obtained from solar panels by 50%.
- It has reduced fertilizers by approximately 20%.
In addition, Sergio explains that since he has been using DeepDrop® he has noticed that “production is more constant since the harvest is more regular”.
Regenerative farm in Catalonia Mas Climent
This farm installed the DeepDrop® localized subsurface drip irrigation system in 2023. His farm is an example of the coexistence of different types of irrigation depending on the terrain and crop. Until then, the olive grove had no irrigation and due to the drought, it had been necessary to make reinforcement irrigations with a bucket.
One year later, from the Mas Climent project, they tell us that the main advantage they have found in DeepDrop®️ is that it allows them to expand the drippers according to the growth of the tree. This is not possible with conventional underground irrigation. On the other hand, they point out that, in addition to the modularity of DeepDrop®️allows them to move drip points on the same tree for different campaigns. And they always know which drippers can become clogged.
Mas Climent Estate
Private properties
Juan Cañadas, formerly a biology teacher, now that he is enjoying his retirement, wants to turn his farm into a place of self-sufficiency. After a year of telling us his story in which, we recall, he told us that one of the advantages of DeepDrop® is that it circumvents the problems of having clay soil with gypsum, he continues to share his concern about the lack of rainfall.
That is why he has devised and started to set up a system for collecting water from his own roofs with 5 tanks capable of collecting 1,000 liters each, to take advantage of the days when it rains the maximum amount of water and be able to irrigate his garden and olive trees.
Álvaro Ruberte has four hectares of land in Aragón. He has placed DeepDrop® devices on one of them, corresponding to 240 olive trees of the empeltre variety, a predominant variety of olive tree in Aragon and the Balearic Islands. He decided to use this irrigation system due to the low water availability. He installed the irrigation system during Easter 2024.
Alvaro shares that he decided to make holes of up to 50 cm with gravel to see if the water would drain better. That is why he had to cut some of the roots of these 30-year-old olive trees. Despite this, he has been able to see that the olive trees have more green shoots and the olives look beautiful. And he hopes that once the cut roots are put back together, the results will improve even more.
Francisco Paredes from Monterrubio de la Serena (Badajoz) has 500 olive trees of the cornezuelo variety, also known as verdial de Badajoz. His olive trees are between 150 and 200 years old. They are located in a rather clayey soil.
Francisco decided to install and use DeepDrop® irrigation devices in a particular way. Out of the 500 olive trees he has, he installed DeepDrop® on 250 of his olive trees two years ago. For the rest of the olive trees, he has continued exclusively with surface drip irrigation (2 per tree). In the olive trees that have DeepDrop® installed, he has opted for systems with self-compensating drippers of 8 liters/hour plus 1 surface dripper of 4 liters/hour.
Francisco is clear: “With DeepDrop® the water is put to better use: in summer the olive trees are greener and the olives are plumper”. Francisco also likes to do research and adds: “With DeepDrop® the humidity stays underground. I have verified this because I dug in the soil and because, having little water and being in a place exposed to very high temperatures, I realized that, irrigating equally, every other day, in each of these two irrigation methods, where there is DeepDrop®, after two days, there is still moisture under the soil, while where there are only surface drippers, it is completely dry.”
Conclusions
The way to incorporate DeepDrop® in the olive grove responds to the farmer’s own experience as well as to the type of soil in which it is located and how the climatic conditions affect them.
There are some who highlight some advantages more than others, but the reduction of water consumption, the fact that the humidity remains underground longer and that the plant health of the trees improves immediately are undoubtedly the most highlighted by almost all the farmers interviewed.
We also want to emphasize the ease of adaptation to different types of soils. In clay soils in times of drought, the soil becomes very compacted. When DeepDrop® is incorporated, the moisture generated underground prevents the soil from becoming impermeable and thus also prevents erosion. DeepDrop® is thus a climate adaptation solution against the desertification of clay soils even when water irrigation flows are lowered.
We have also seen that with a clay soil and DeepDrop® gypsum, it allows water to reach the roots of the trees and also to end or drastically reduce the water stress of the trees. Finally, there are those who have also seen how they have not only reduced their water consumption, but also reduced their energy and fertilizer consumption. Welcome to the irrigation system where less is more!
