The availability and the quality of water in the European Community has been rapidly diminishing year by year, until now we have reached a point where we must change the regulations in force regarding the extraction and use of this precious element. We must draw up a European Directive that supports the principle that the health of our waters is, above all, a question of prevention and efficient management. The law and its specific features is not pertinent to this article. An examination of the numbers on which the legislators are based, taken from an accurate analysis throughout the national territory are as follows:
 
Availability (mc / annually per head)
 
The annual rainfall per head amounts to about 5273 mc rain a year.
But not all the rain that falls can be stored and made available. Of the 5273 mc/annually per head, only just under 2% per head is available ( 921 mc ). This seems to be an enormous quantity but it must be divided between the civil, industrial, agricultural and power sectors. And the agricultural sector alone (the object of our analysis) utilises 49.6% of all the resources available. The demand for water continues to grow even in geographical areas that are not usually irrigated in, for example, the northeast, where the demand is for 48.3%. Also the difference between the areas that could be irrigated and the areas that are already irrigated is diminishing. In the Veneto area for example, of the 54% of land that could be irrigated, already more than 35% is artificially irrigated, a situation that would have been unthinkable only ten years ago when rainfall was the only form of irrigation. The situation becomes even more symptomatic if we analyse the national figures: of the 28% of the territory that could be irrigated, already 19.7% is under irrigation so reducing the difference to a significant 8.3% that still relies on rainfall. Agriculture is going towards irrigation and this is a trend that cannot be arrested.


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