


07/2010
Selected for the Global Economic Symposium 2010
It is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy the rising global demand for food in a sustainable manner. A number of reasons contribute to the uncertainty in our ability to meet the food demand of an increasing world population: the average living standard of the population is rising, land use is shifting from agriculture to urban and industrial uses, the production of nonfood crops for bio-fuels is on the rise, investments in increasing agricultural productivity are growing slowly, water and arable land are increasingly becoming scarce and global warming is making it more difficult to produce food in various poor countries. Moreover, the food price crisis of 2008 added fuel to the fire and put food security on top of the policy agenda.
At the heart of the food security agenda lies water scarcity as irrigated agriculture accounts for 50 percent of the total crop production in the World. Many countries, especially in North-Africa, Near East and East Asia have already reached critical levels of water scarcity, which is expected to get worse with the forces mentioned above.
There are various ways of tackling the entangled problems of water scarcity and food security: