Role of water management for global food production and poverty alleviation

Abstract

In the coming 25-30 years global food production will have to be doubled in order to maintain food security at the global level. With respect to this to a certain extent the advantage is that food prices have increased over the past seven to eight years, and especially during the past two years. This may put farmers who are able to sell at least a certain part of their harvest in a better position, provided that the increase in production costs is at a lower level. On the other hand it puts the poor people in the cities of the emerging and least developed countries in an increasingly complicated situation as it will require more of them to remain able to purchase their food. In this paper we give a summarised overview of the role of water management for global food production and poverty alleviation. It turns out that to maintain food security in the near and medium-term future a substantially larger increase in production will be required than continuation of the present trend. While this is quite an effort, one may expect that at least for the near future the costs will remain at the present high level and that they may even increase further. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.