Smart meters are presented as a technological innovation that can benefit both users and managers of a limited resource such as water: they provide irrigators with real-time information about their water withdrawals, helping them to control their water extraction, and facilitating water sharing when they manage a network in common; they provide managers with frequent, precise and spatialised measurements of consumptions, which are relevant for regulating hydraulic structures and optimizing dams' water discharges. But the study conducted on the river basin Louts (south-west of France) presented in this article shows reluctant farmers. This attitude can be explained by a perceived uselessness of this technology as an appropriate irrigation management tool, and by distrust towards its promoter - the water manager, fearing adverse effects of increasing manager knowledge on real water consumption (increased penalties and costs, increased opposition to irrigation...). This initial opposition seems likely to be overcome, by co-construction with farmers of a comprehensive reform of water management that incorporates this technology. It is a question of changing the opinion of the peers (a more equitable system), of restoring trust towards the promoter (a more accurate count of the consumptions) and to define appropriate technico-economic parameters to interest financially irrigators (cost of water, opportunity to adjust their consumption, etc.). These parameters remain to be refined by seeking compromises between the manager's constraints and the profitability of irrigated agriculture, not to mention that a quota reform affects the market value of irrigated land, to which farmers are very sensitive. Water for irrigation Smart meters Acceptability Perception France.
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