A new report find that a quarter of the world’s crops are grown in places experiencing high levels of water stress, water unreliability, or both. The analysis comes from the non-profit research organization World Resources Institute, or WRI, and highlights the difficulty of growing enough food to meet rising demand on a warmer planet.
One in every 11 people in the world is hungrymeaning they are not getting enough food to maintain basic health, according to a recent United Nations report. The water challenges outlined in WRI’s latest research could potentially contribute to increased levels of food insecurity, especially as global temperatures continue to rise.
The report looks at both irrigated crops, in which water is transferred from reservoirs to cropland, and rain-fed crops, which receive water through precipitation. The authors relied on WRIs existing global water risk data and compares this with crop production data from the International Food Policy Research Institute.
By analyzing both sets of data, the report authors found that both irrigated and rainfed crops face complications when it comes to water access. For example, about 60 percent of irrigated crops by weight come from regions of the world experiencing high or extremely high levels of water stress. Water stress refers to increased competition over water resources; it is considered high when 40 percent or more of an area’s local water supply is taken up by agriculture, energy, industry and domestic use.
Areas facing high levels of water stress require robust water management and governance, said Sam Kuzma, one of the report’s authors. The problem, she said, stems in part from a general tendency to take water for granted and treat it as an endlessly renewable, on-demand resource. “Because we don’t place a value on water, you can irrigate and not pay much at all for the water you use,” says Kuzma, who manages the water data program at WRI. “This means we can be quite reckless with how we grow and in what environments. That’s why you see alfalfa growing in the desert.”
The majority of the world’s irrigated crops — 72 percent — are grown in just 10 countries, including Brazil, China, India and the United States, according to WRI. These crops include staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize make up a good portion of the world’s calories.
The high rate of water stress in areas growing irrigated crops poses problems for global food security. India, for example, is a major agricultural producer and the world’s largest exporter of rice. The country faces significant water risks; about one-fourth of its total crop production comes from areas that use more water than can be naturally replenished, according to WRI’s analysis. Kuzma noted that this could lead to groundwater depletion in parts of the country that rely on a source of water that “just isn’t going to be around forever” if current usage rates continue. “If it’s an important part of our global food supply chain and we no longer have the water to create those commodities, sorry, everyone is affected,” she added.
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WRI also looked at water unreliability facing rain-fed crops, which account for two-thirds of the world’s food supply. The analysis found that 8 percent of rainfed crops by weight face high to extremely high levels of water unreliability, which refers to fluctuations in annual water supply such as periods of drought and extreme precipitation. caused by climate change. As the planet continues to warm, the amount of rainfed crops affected by these conditions could increase by 40 percent by 2050 compared to 2020 levels. Warming temperatures are also likely to affect irrigated crops such as crops need more water to survive in warmer climates.
Nicole Silk, the global director of freshwater outcomes at the environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, noted that these challenges have a huge impact on people and communities. Floods and droughts are just as likely to compromise both “people and crop production,” she said. “We are increasingly moving towards a world where both people and food production are going to be in places that are particularly water stressed,” she added.
As a sector, agriculture is the number one consumer of fresh water worldwideaccounting for 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals — the process of removing fresh water from surface water sources, such as rivers and lakes, as well as groundwater sources such as underground aquifers. In its latest report, WRI refers to agriculture as the biggest driver of water stress. And yet food has to be grown somewhere, somehow, by someone. Indeed, all signs point to growing more food, such as the world population will reach 10 billion by 2050. So the challenge is how to grow crops without worsening water resources.
“We have to be smarter about what we grow, and we can be smarter about how we grow what we grow,” Silk said. She endorsed some of the interventions proposed by WRI as possible solutions – especially paying more attention to soil health (because the more moisture soil can retain, the less water farmers have to add to crops). WRI also recommends shifting diets away from meat, which requires a tremendous amount of land and water to produce, to less water-intensive food.
Silk also mentioned incorporating more nature-based solutions, trying “green” strategies replicate an ecosystem’s natural rhythmsas opposed to “grey” interventions that involve people building new infrastructure. The most effective nature-based solutions for managing cropland water will vary from place to place, depending on geography as well as what is grown. Silk noted that “because water is always moving,” finding the best management strategies will require stepping back to see the full picture—for example, reforestation can improve water quality and regulate the water cycle within a landscape. “I think it ends up being a very interesting opportunity for conservationists to meet with farmers and ranchers, to meet with local water regulators and utilities, and also with indigenous people and populations,” she said.
Kuzma noted that farmers know better than anyone—and typically before anyone else—about the water challenges they face, and that WRI’s analysis is really intended to communicate those risks to a broader audience. And she acknowledged that these management shifts and policy recommendations involve asking farmers to “change how they work,” which usually requires them to shoulder the financial burden of climate adaptation alone. “We also need to think about what type of financial policy and corporate sponsorship we can provide” to make those shifts possible, she said.
Silk agreed. “Sometimes farmers and ranchers are willing to change their practices, but they don’t necessarily have the financial resources to do so,” she said. “So if they are encouraged to change those practices or someone else can come in and help them, it makes a big difference.”
