Google has announced that it has deployed an AI-powered precision agriculture platform to support water sustainability concerns in the Scheldt Basin in Belgium.

As part of the initiative, Google has partnered with Agua Segura and Agrow Analytics to implement AI-powered precision agriculture across more than 1,000 hectares of farmland in and around the river network.

The initiative will deploy Agrow’s technology platform, which integrates climate, water, and soil data from satellite and thermal imagery to provide precise irrigation and fertilization recommendations. According to the company, the platform permits farmers to make more efficient decisions. The aim of the initiative is to replenish up to 158 million gallons (600,000 cubic meters) of water across the basin by reducing annual irrigation demand and fertilizer use across more than 1,000 hectares of farmland.

The Scheldt Basin is a river catchment spanning roughly 21,000 square kilometers (8,100 square miles) across northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, drained by the Scheldt river as it flows from France through Ghent and Antwerp to the North Sea. It is one of Western Europe’s most densely populated and industrialized watersheds, home to the major Port of Antwerp.

Agrow has already partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on a similar project in the Ebro basin, the longest river in Spain. The partnership, signed in March, aims to help improve agricultural irrigation efficiency.

Google has signed several agreements to support greater water sustainability as part of its goal to replenish 120 percent of the freshwater consumption from its offices and data centers by 2030.

In October, the company completed an aquifer storage and recovery system in The Dalles, Oregon. Last March, the company signed four new partnerships across Chile, California, Taiwan, and France to support water stewardship and sustainable farming practices.

Despite the progress, Google has been criticized recently for a technical paper detailing its methodology for measuring the energy, emissions, and water impact of Gemini AI prompts. According to the paper, the median Gemini Apps text prompt uses 0.26 milliliters (or about five drops) of water. However, some experts criticized the findings, arguing that indirect water use was not accounted for, with the study only accounting for water use in data center cooling, and not the water needed for large generation projects that power the data centers themselves.

In addition to Google, several other hyperscalers have set lofty water stewardship goals. In 2021, Meta announced plans to be water-positive by 2030, and in 2022, AWS announced it would be water-positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.