Water, agriculture and food security
The bread, meat, milk, morning cereal, or porridge with banana for the children, we need plenty of water for all our food. Almost every person is using at least 1.5 liters of water for drinking.
Agriculture is the main user of water, uses about 70% but major portion is in some regions of the world. The world population is already above 7 billion and the availability of water per person decreases dramatically.
You will find a strong association between hunger, poverty, and lack of water. The Draft United Nations Millennium Development identified the countries / regions suffering most from malnutrition. These regions coincide with the semi-arid ecosystems, steppes and savannas, where rain fed farming is the main source of foodstuff, and shortage of water is the major factor for agriculture growth in those regions.
One of the pressing issues of our humanity will be to enhance water productivity. How to produce more grain, milk, bananas with less water?
A matter of color
In the World Water meeting, expert divided the water into 3 categories, blue water from river, green water, rain for irrigation, gray water ( polluted, reprocessed, recycled).
We hear a lot of blue water. Its technology, this water being pumped, stores, distributes through a fluted complex plumbing. The blue water, this is what overcomes from the climate; blue water is the core source of the agricultural revolution.
Gray water is from of our town and our frantic busyness industrious but also through the reprocessing technology of wastewater is a pool of water that can be reused with some precautions.
Green water, it depends on weather and the climate of different countries of world.
However, rain fed agriculture, mostly depends on the rain, the monsoon. Its importance differs between regions.
The characteristics and challenges of rain fed agriculture in semi-arid tropics
Rainfall is concentrated in a very short season (between 3 and 5 months); some places heavy rains, unpredictable and a significant variability between each year. Basically, there is little rain but when it rains, it floods and landslides followed by long periods of drought. The peasants are somehow accustomed to this environment hostile and unpredictable.
They want to limit risk, and therefore are not encouraged to invest. The use of their time, the purchase of fertilizers or purchase of improved seeds can all be wiped out if the rains do not come in time, or are too strong. These farmers know the effects of water scarcity and soil types that can more or less retain water. They have a limited choice of crops.
Change management is a challenge.
Yet there are solutions.
The amount of green water is not inevitable; it does depend solely on the goodwill of the sky. We can improve its use before it runs off and is lost.
Excellent water management to get the agriculture product is therefore not only investing in sophisticated equipment hyper drop by drop, pumping but to promote the collection of local practices and conservation of rainwater in these agricultural areas considered underdeveloped.
Our future might depend on green water! Make a good management to store green water. Exploit the potential to use this water that is neglected presently. With a proper management, we can produce more crops to feed the people and thus make food security for all.
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