Managing water resources for crop production

Increasing crop production to meet the food requirements of the world's growing population will put great pressure on global water resources. Given that the vast freshwater resources that are available in the world are far from fully exploited, globally there should be sufficient water for future agricultural requirements. However, there are large areas where low water supply and high human demand may lead to regional shortages of water for future food production. In these arid and semi-arid areas, where water is a major constraint on production, improving water resource management is crucial if Malthusian disasters are to be avoided. There is considerable scope for improvement, since in both dryland and irrigated agriculture only about one-third of the available water (as rainfall, surface, or groundwater) is used to grow useful plants. This paper illustrates a range of techniques that could lead to increased crop production by improving agricultural water use efficiency. This may be achieved by increasing the total amount of water available to plants or by increasing the efficiency with which that water is used to produce biomass. Although the crash from the Malthusian precipice may ultimately be inevitable if population growth is not addressed, the time taken to reach the edge of the precipice could be lengthened by more efficient use of existing water resources.