Water Scarcity Leads to Food Insecurity

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview on the interrelation between water scarcity and food production. A general perception has been existed worldwide that agricultural water, as the major user, is often wasteful and has less value, compared to other uses. Additionally, water scarcity became more acute in many part of the world. Thus, there is a need to manage water resources more efficiently to produce more food with the same amount of water. Although irrigation is important to attain stable food production, over-irrigation is prevailing in many areas worldwide and it has many disadvantages. On the contrary, under-irrigation with less than crop water requirements causes stressful conditions to the growing plants leading to lower yield and consequently food insecurity. One of the effective water management practices is deficit irrigation application. It can use water resources more efficiently in the agricultural sector. It can maintain reasonable levels of production and it could improve yield quality. One might wonder whether application of deficit irrigation could contribute in increasing food availability. Although application of deficit irrigation involves loss in crop productivity, it also secures water to be use in cultivating more lands. However, on national level, will the production resulted from the new added area can compensate the loss attained by application of deficit irrigation. In this book, we answer the above question and shed the light on the role of deficit irrigation in securing food under water scarcity. We also tested whether deficit irrigation practice could positively contribute in reducing the loss in production of crops under the impact of climate change in 2030.