Serbia

Under the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, about 120 000 ha of agricultural land were equipped for irrigation in 288 schemes in Serbia. However, only about 35 000 ha of schemes are fully operational and 47 000 ha are partially functional. Among other, this is caused by the shortage of markets, redistribution of the Kombinats, adverse farmer financial positions, deterioration in the physical systems, land ownership problems, legal changes and institutional weakness [RS01]. Area equipped for irrigation by region was assumed to be represented by the maximum of the area intended to be used for irrigation in the period 2001-2005 [RS02]. The total area was summing up to 86 311 ha. The irrigated area per district is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Serbia irrigation areas in PDF or Serbia irrigation areas in Excel.

Area equipped for irrigation was assigned with priority 7 to polygons extracted from the Corine 2000 land cover database for Europe [RS03] that were classified as rice fields (213), and with priority 6 to polygons classified as non-irrigated arable land (211), vineyards (221), fruit trees and berry plantations (222), or complex cultivation patterns (242).

Total area actually irrigated and related water abstractions of ground- and surface water was available for the years 2003-2007 for the regions of Central Serbia and Vojvodina [RS04]. Since irrigated areas and corresponding water abstractions varied significantly from year to year, area actually irrigated and percentage area irrigated from groundwater was computed based on average in this 5 year period. The area actually used for irrigation in Serbia computed that way was 27 541 ha.

References

[RS01]: World Bank. 2005. Serbia irrigation and drainage rehabilitation project. Project appraisal document. Report No: 32379-YF, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/, 02/07/2006.
[RS02]: The Agriculture Inspection of the Republic of Serbia. unknown. A survey of the arable agriculture land in the Republic of Serbia intended for irrigation (for the period 2001-2005). Table 1.1 in: Ministry for the Protection of the Natural Resources and Environment. 2001. State of the Environment in 2000 and priorities in 2001+ for Serbia. http://enrin.grida.no/htmls/yugo/serb/index.htm, 05/08/2006.
[RS03]: EEA. 2007. Corine land cover 2000 - vector by country (CLC2000), update for Serbia and Montenegro. http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=667, 03/04/2007.
[RS04]: Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia. 2008. Statistical yearbook of Serbia, 2008. Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia, http://webrzs.statserb.sr.gov.yu/axd/en/god.htm, 26/08/2009.