Our Perspective
Will We Have Enough Water to Feed the World?
By Kate Humphrey, sustainability writer
Posted about 1 year ago
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During the first week of May 2011, hundreds of ag industry leaders, scientists and policy makers from more than 20 countries convened in Lincoln, Nebraska to answer one question.
Will we have enough water to feed the world?
It's a daunting question, but one that desperately needs an answer. The population is estimated to hit 9 billion people by 2050, and those people are going to require twice as much food as farmers produce today. This is why the Water for Food conference exists.
The Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute of the University of Nebraska hosted the 2011 conference May 1- 4. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Monsanto sponsored the conference. Speakers spoke on the issue of water use in agriculture - all agreeing water productivity in agriculture is going to have to be drastically improved in the next couple years.
"Agriculture today uses over 2/3 of the world's fresh water," Mogens Bay, CEO of Valmont, said during the conference's industry leader panel discussion. "If you have to double the world's agriculture output over the next 40 years, it's mathematically impossible to do without becoming more efficient in how we use water."
Conference-goers tackled the question from different angles, but all of the answers followed the same theme: "Yes, but..."
Yes - we can feed the world, BUT the challenges of improving water productivity are great and many.
The challenges touched on by the speakers varied greatly: from increasing world trade, developing better agronomic practices, continuing to improve seed varieties, empowering small-holder farmers with access to technology, and reducing water waste. However, the factor that seemed to hold sway over all these obstacles was policy.
According to András Szöllösi-Nagy, speaker at the conference and rector at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, policy makers will set the stage for the future of agriculture. He stressed the importance of policy makers making good decisions based on good science -- and scientists effectively communicating that good science to policy makers. Szöllösi-Nagy said it will be the policy makers that set these creative solutions in action, making them essential to answering the water crisis question.
"The big challenge we all face is how we put water in the minds of people," Szöllösi-Nagy said, meaning the general public and policy makers.
According to Szöllösi-Nagy all the technologic advances in the world won't matter if people aren't aware of the crisis we face when it comes to the future of water.
