Food, Trade and Water
Producing food requires massive quantities of water. Agricultural production consumes seventy percent of water. As people are removed from poverty, they tend to consume higher quantities of water intensive foods, such as beef and dairy products. Based on today’s water productivity and consumption patterns, feeding the malnourished and additional 3 billion people expected in 2050 would require we triple that amount of water used in irrigation (SIWI, 2005) . This would empty many of our rivers and aquifers. And using agriculture to produce bioenergy will require even more. Projected demand for bioenergy production is estimated to double the amount of water needed for agriculture.
The global eating disorder
Increased commodity prices in 2008-2009 have driven 110 million people into poverty and added 44 million more to the undernourished (UNEP 2009). But more than enough food is produced to feed a healthy global population. Distribution and access to food is a problem – 840 million people are malnourished and even more people, 1.2 billion, suffer from being overweight or obese (Lundqvist et al. 2008) .
The problem is that half of what is grown in the field is either lost before people get a chance to eat or wasted after it is purchased. Tremendous quantities of food are discarded in processing, transport, supermarkets and in the kitchen. In poorer countries, a majority of uneaten food is lost before it has a chance to be consumed. Depending on the crop, an estimated 15-35 percent of food may be lost in the field. Another 10-15 percent is discarded during processing, transport and storage (ibid). In richer countries, production is more efficient but waste is greater: people toss the food they buy and all the resources used to grow, ship and produce the food along with it.
Wasted food, wasted water
In the US as much as 30 percent of food, worth some USD 48.3 billion, is thrown away. That is like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion litres of water into the garbage can - enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people. It not just the U.S.; food waste in environmentally conscious Sweden is 25 percent as well (ibid). Curbing these losses and improving water productivity provides win-win opportunities for farmers, business, ecosystems, and the global hungry.
Regional crisis, global trade solutions
Improving efficiency in agriculture and reducing waste and losses in the food chain are primary solutions to feeding everyone and sustaining water supplies. But an estimated 1.2 billion people already live in areas where there is not enough water to meet demand. And with rising demand for water-intensive agricultural products, such as beef and bioenergy, and with climate change, pressure mounts. The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture 2007, predicts that these trends can lead to crises in many places, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
As products are exported, so is the water that was required to produce them: 1,625 billion cubic meters of virtual water are shipped around the planet annually. National, regional and global water and food security can be enhanced when water intensive commodities (both agricultural and commercial products) are traded from places where they are economically viable to produce to places where they are not. Egypt and Japan, for example, import billions of liters ‘virtual water’ every year while the US and Brazil export billions through trade of food and goods. Huge savings of water can be made by trading food from areas with available water and efficient agriculture to those who have neither.
But for many water-short regions, reduced food production is not an easy option. In Northern China, for example, the Huang, Hai and Huai basins are water scarce (with half the per capita water availability of the water scarcity line). Yet they support 40 percent of China’s agricultural land, produce two thirds of its grain and support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of farmers (Cai, 2009) . Northern China, like many dry, developing areas is already urbanising rapidly. What will farmers do if they do not farm?
