Our world faces formidable challenges. The global population has now crossed the seven billion mark and is projected to reach nine billion by mid-century, requiring at least a 70 percent increase in agricultural production to meet increased demand.

The world’s resources are under more strain than ever before as global demand for water, energy and food is on the rise. At the same time, climate change threatens farmers’ ability to produce enough to meet growing demand, and poor communities’ ability to access nutritious food.

More frequent and extreme weather events are affecting our food supply, our infrastructure and our livelihoods. Last year, Russia suffered its worst drought in more than 100 years, triggering forest fires and destroying millions of hectares of crops. This year we have seen the Horn of Africa face its worst drought in 60 years as more than 13 million people requiring emergency food aid and pastoralists losing a third of their livestock. Recent flooding in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Cambodia has also impacted livelihoods and worsened food insecurity.

The most vulnerable regions of the world – developing countries – are disproportionately affected by climate change, despite contributing little to carbon emissions. People in developing countries depend heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, yet are increasingly challenged in their ability to produce sufficient food for their families and for markets.

Whilst agriculture is a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, it has significant potential to be part of the solution to climate change.

Preserving and enhancing food security requires increasing agricultural productivity whilst at the time adapting to and mitigating climate change. It also requires a shift towards building farmers’ and vulnerable communities’ resilience to climate shocks, and related food price volatility.

More productive, sustainable and resilient agriculture requires transformations in how rural people manage natural resources and how efficiently they use these resources as inputs for crop production. For these transformations to occur, it is essential that the world’s farmers, scientists, researchers, the private sector, development practitioners and food consumers come together to achieve climate-smart agriculture.

Yet the agricultural sector remains astonishingly underfunded. As a percentage of total investment, agriculture has dropped from 22 percent in 1980 to approximately 6 percent today. In absolute terms, this constitutes a drop to roughly half of the funding allocated thirty years ago.

At the upcoming climate change negotiations in Durban, we call on negotiators to recognise the important role of agriculture in addressing climate change so that a new era of agricultural innovation and knowledge sharing can be achieved. Specifically, we ask that they approve a Work Programme for agriculture under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) so that the sector can take early action to determine the long-term investments needed to transform agriculture to meet future challenges.

You can see the full list of signatories on the Agriculture and Rural Development Day website.

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In the paper, the authors argue that the areas of energy, water and food policy are interlinked, and have shared concerns ranging from environmental impacts to price volatility.

The Water-Food-Energy nexus, a term developed by the World Economic Forum in its Global Risks 2011 series, refers to the risks of water security, food security and energy security. Population growth and rising economic prosperity are expected to increase demand for energy, food and water, which in turn puts pressure on natural resources. This, combined with global governance failures, economic disparity and geopolitical conflict, could result in food shortages, struggles over water and hamper economic development. The three issues are deeply linked – food production requires water, water extraction and distribution require energy, which in turn requires water, and food prices depend on energy inputs. Climate change and growing populations also exacerbate this nexus.

The authors claim that identifying the interrelationships between these three areas is of great importance to help avoid potential tensions, and that ‘systems thinking’ – the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole – is required to address such a wide range of possible topics.

The paper states that while environmental issues are the core link between all three areas, other factors suggest that economic and security-related issues may be stronger motivators of change. The authors conclude that understanding of the complex interactions between the areas of energy, water and food will require new institutional capacity both in industrialised and developing countries.

The Farming First coalition advocates a six-point action plan for enhancing sustainable development through agriculture. In line with these six principles, Farming First encourages stakeholders to pursue policies that achieve long-term global sustainability goals through proven techniques, including specific actions in the area of water use and management, and around food security.

These principles are:

1. Safeguard natural resources
2. Share knowledge
3. Build local access and capacity
4. Protect harvests
5. Enable access to markets
6. Prioritise research imperatives

You can read more about the Farming First principles here, download our policy paper on food security here, read about our water policy here or find our section on the green economy here.

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The report argues that although irrigation in Africa has the potential to boost agricultural productivities by at least 50 per cent, food production is almost entirely sustained through rainwater, with only six per cent of the total cultivated area equipped for irrigation.

Over 70 per cent of Africa’s poor live in rural areas, and most of these people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Therefore, the report says, agriculture has a key role to play in tackling poverty on the continent.

To help increase agricultural production and decrease poverty, many development agencies have recently proposed to substantially increase investments in irrigation in Africa. But, as the report claims, the potential for irrigation investments in the region is highly dependent on geographic, hydrologic, agronomic and economic factors that must be taken into account when the viability of projects is assessed.

The report analyses irrigation investment potential in Africa, and concludes that there is “significant profitable irrigation potential for both small-scale and large-scale systems”.

Farming First think that water use efficiency is important as water is a precious resource. By 2050, the proportion of the population facing stressed water supplies is expected to increase by 500% and the number facing full water scarcity is expected to increase by 800%.

We believe that research, innovation, and access to improved technologies, seeds, and improved irrigation techniques are essential to increasing the efficiency of water use, and that agriculture needs to be part of watershed management.

Click here to go to our water page, where you can download our position paper and read about our six-point action plan.

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The report, titled Major River Basins Have Enough Water to Sustainably Double Food Production in the Coming Decades, says that whilst water-related conflicts and shortages abound around the globe, there is sufficient water to sustain food, energy, industrial and environmental needs during the 21st century.

The reports author’s claim that the biggest challenge facing water is not scarcity, but the inefficient use and inequitable distribution of the water flowing through key river basins such as the Nile, Ganges, Andes, Yellow, Niger and Volta.

Alain Vidal, the director of the CPWF, said:

“…the problem overall is a failure to make efficient and fair use of the water available in these river basins. This is ultimately a political challenge, not a resource concern.”

Researchers identified large areas of arable land in Asia and Latin America where production could potentially rise by at least 10 per cent.

Dr. Simon Cook, the leader of the CPWF’s Basin Focal Research Project, said:

“…there are relatively straightforward opportunities to satisfy our development needs and alleviate poverty for millions of people without exhausting our most precious natural resource… With a major push to intensify rainfed agriculture, we could feed the world without increasing the strain on river basins systems.”

The report states that if donors and government ministries put more emphasis on supporting rain-fed agriculture, food production could increase rapidly and sustainably.

The authors of the report also note that policies often ignore the role of livestock and fisheries in local livelihoods and diets, which play a vital role in certain communities, such as the 40 million in the Mekong who depend on fisheries for at least half the year.

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The report states that water used for production, otherwise known as ‘virtual water’, constitutes 95 per cent of human water use. As pressure on global water supplies grows, recognising the amount of water used in each step of production could play a vital role in managing water use.

The report claims that 86 per cent of ‘virtual water’ is used in the production of food, but despite its importance, businesses are only just starting to seriously consider the risks of interruptions of water to their supply chains.

The report’s authors go on to state that the demand for water is forecast to outstrip supply by 40 per cent over the next twenty years, and this may worsen as a result of changes in hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns due to climate change.

According to the authors, the UK government’s pledge to invest in a green economy emphasises the importance of maintaining responsible production processes. Given the global dimension of water consumption, with countries exporting and importing water, it is important that countries recognise their interdependencies when drawing up national water strategies.

The report concludes that tighter management of water use in agriculture could be done through a number of measures, including greater cooperation between farmers that share the same water catchment.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank have also discussed implementing water metering and pricing as a regulatory mechanism; water pricing in the Guadalquivir basin in Spain has resulted in a 30 per cent reduction in water consumption.

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Agriculture accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawn for human use and that figure will rise as the demand for irrigated land increases.  In a recent report, ‘Charting Our Water Future’, by the 2030 Water Resources Group, estimates showed that in twenty years time our global water requirements will be 40 percent greater than the current supply, which necessitates that the agricultural sector takes steps to use water more efficiently.

The OECD has published a new study looking at the sustainable management of water resources in agriculture.  The report highlights the increased pressures on already scarce water resources due to climate change, which has increased the incidence of drought and flood in some areas. Amidst growing urbanisation, industrialisation and more severe weather conditions, the report states that farmers will need to produce more food but with less water, and it offers the following policy recommendations for increasing water efficiency and improving water management in agriculture:

• Recognize the complexity and diversity of managing water resources in agriculture; water use is a complex issue, due to the variety of water resources and different allocations of water to agriculture amongst other consumptive uses in different countries. Policies must be country and region-specific accordingly.
• Strengthen institutions and property rights; simplify the network of organisations that manage water resources and create more flexibility in water property rights to meet environmental demands.
• Ensure charges for water supplied to agriculture reflect full supply costs; need to address the scarcity value of water by developing measures to ensure full cost recovery of water usage in agriculture, which will help to promote water use efficiency.
• Improve policy integration between agriculture, water, energy and environment policies; identifying the interrelationship between these sectors will help to encourage more efficient use of water and energy through, for example, the restoration of land in flood plains by planting of trees.
• Enhance agriculture’s resilience to climate change and climate variability; better land management practices will help to cope with a growing incidence of flood and drought.
• Address knowledge and information deficiencies to better guide water resource management; measuring water use, being transparent about water supply costs and monitoring water extractions will help to direct better policy decision making as well as providing the best technical advice to farmers.

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A panel of experts was composed of:

• Dr. Robert Paarlberg, Professor at Wellesley College, author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
• Dr. Nina Federoff, Science and Technology Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State and to the Administrator of USAID, author of Mendel in the Kitchen
• Dr. Calestous Juma, Pew award winner and Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
• Mark Cantley, former head of the European Commission’s “Concertation Unit for Biotechnology in Europe” and of OECD’s Biotechnology Unit
• Dr. Gale Buchanan, former USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, and lead author of the paper Agricultural Productivity Strategies for the Future: Addressing U.S. and Global Challenges

During the conference, Dr. Norman Borlaug’s last published statement was also revealed, which is included in a new CAST paper that identifies many challenges that agriculture will face in the coming years.

You can watch the video here.

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In drought conditions, plants begin to produce more of this hormone, which creates a number of changes to their physical structure. Their seeds lie dormant in the ground in order to wait out the dry period.  They slow their growth in order to conserve energy.  Tiny pores in their leaves are closed in order to prevent water from being lost.

Understanding how abscisic acid works in plants can help scientists replicate this phenomenon for farmers whose crops are suffering from drought conditions.  R&D such as this can help agricultural producers adapt to the impacts of climate change.

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The Gates Foundation has provided this video to show how one of their grantees’ low-cost treadle pumps are helping Indian farmers access irrigated water for their crops.

These water pumps are supplied by International Development Enterprises (IDE).  They are designed to be cost-effective and low-maintenance, with only one part needed to be changed each year at a cost of 20 U.S. cents. Farmers simply dig a bore hole, insert a plastic tube into the hole and then connect the pump to this tube.  Farmers then operate the pump using their leg muscles, and they can even pump extra water into adjacent reservoirs for on-going regulated use.

Only one in three farmers currently has access to irrigation in India.  Accessing this technology helps smallholder farmers make more long-term investments, such as improved seeds and fertilizers, for their fields.  Farmers might even be able to begin growing more lucrative cash crops such as fruits or vegetables.

In an innovative promotional campaign, IDE shares this knowledge with farmers by bringing movie screens into rural communities in the back of a van.  Farmers are incentivised to watch a short presentation about the treadle water pumps by the promise of a free movie feature which is aired after the presentation finishes.

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The programme host visits farmers in India, Cuba, the UK to look at how key issues such as water availability, climate change, and price volatility impacts their livelihoods and their ability to grow their crops.

The programme raises many of the questions and concerns which the Farming First plan aims to address.  It also suggests that the issue of food security is one that is increasingly capturing the attention of more mainstream audiences in the west.

For those interested, the second part of the series airs on BBC Two on Monday, 24 August at 9pm.

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