Water-retaining farming

Holding on to water is the same task on arable land and in a permanent crop – only the tools differ. In both, the same three questions decide it: how long there is living or dead cover on the soil, when we disturb it, and how much organic matter is left behind. Without irrigation these three are practically the whole water-management toolkit, and this is where the regenerative and the organic approach arrive at the same place.

In a permanent crop: 150 hectares without irrigation

On the rosehip plantation at Leányvár 150 hectares are in production, and there has never been irrigation. In six years we have lived through five drought years – 2020, 2022, 2024, 2025 and the exceptional 2026 – and water is still part of the technology. It simply does not arrive through a pipe: our only real water-management tool is how we treat the interrow, and when.

What we expect from the interrow is simple: it should be there, use as little water as possible, and give complete soil cover. That means we do not carry the green mass away but chop it onto the soil – the moist mulch keeps the water in place, and the dying root system leaves nitrogen and humus behind.

In practice this is a question of timing. After rain we mulch, so that the fallen precipitation stays in the soil. In drought we do not touch it: the tall interrow holds the water, and cutting it releases even what it caught from the morning dew. In spring I often argue for postponing, because cutting starts new growth, and that takes more water out of the soil than the standing vegetation.

This decision carries a built-in contradiction that cannot be sidestepped. The same interrow cover that holds the water also shelters voles, and its damper microclimate favours rust. Loosening against voles, on the other hand, tears out the legumes and reduces the mulch mass. There is no interrow management that solves all three at once – you have to decide year by year, block by block, and accept that it will be at the expense of one of them.

Water is not a one-directional problem either. In the same year the lower flats stand in surface water with a high water table, while the higher parts show drought symptoms – in the same block, a few hundred metres apart.

The most interesting lesson comes from 2026: the rose tolerates drought better than the rust does. In our driest year the fruit load came close to a record in places, because the dry weather held back our most important pathogen. Water shortage therefore does not only appear on the loss side – and that also changes when and how much it is worth spending on plant protection.

On arable land: the same logic, different tools

On the regenerative side we do exactly the same thing, only on arable land. The goal there too is that the soil should be covered for as long as possible, lose as little water as possible to evaporation, and retain as much organic matter as possible. The tools, however, are different: cover crops, reduced disturbance, organic-matter management and microbial products – this is what I work with in the Biosphères projects and in my advisory work with large Hungarian farms.

The most important difference is that on arable land the cover has to be sown, while in a plantation you manage what grows on its own. With an arable cover crop the species choice and the sowing date decide; in the plantation it is the timing of the mulching – but the question is the same in both places: when is it worth removing the cover, and when is what we lose with it more expensive.

What transfers between the two: the logic of timing, judging the cover in terms of a water balance, and the fact that disturbance always goes on two accounts – we gain something by it, and we lose water with it. What does not transfer: in a permanent crop the interrow is the same plant stand for years, so a wrong decision stays with us for years, while on arable land it can be replanned every season.

In 2025 we mixed the two worlds on a 30×25 metre patch: loosening to 30 centimetres with a leading disc and a spiked roller, mature horse manure on top, several-year-old straw mulch over that, finished off with a Güttler roller – an arable regenerative intervention inside a plantation. The next day 15 millimetres of rain fell, exactly the situation it was built for.

This approach works together with the practice of rosehip growing and bird-friendly plant protection : the same cover holds the water, provides the habitat for the predators, and carries the risk.

If you farm without irrigation – whether on arable land or in a plantation – and you need to handle water better, this is something I can help with: take a look at my advisory service.

If you have any thoughts on the subject, feel free to get in touch with me.