Water saving steps to cut water use in agriculture from the International Water Management Institute:

 

• Repairing the worst leaks in irrigation channels or investing in drip irrigation will bring huge savings.

• Modest water storage can hugely improve yields in rain-fed agriculture.

• Pumping water into natural aquifers is much cheaper than building dams, as it prevents waste of water through evaporation.

• Flooding rice paddy fields only part of the time cuts water consumption.

• Satellite technology can be used to make water use more efficient.

• Certain “waste” water has nutrients that can be used in agriculture.

 

the U.S. today requires 50,000 fewer gallons of water than was needed 20 years ago. Cultivation of an acre of cotton in the U.S. today consumes 25% less water than in 1989, according to the Field to Market report by the Keystone Center.

“There’s no doubt that people are concerned about the impact agriculture has on the environment,” observes Mark Lawson, Corn Technology Yield and Stress Lead for Monsanto. “One of the things that we’re looking to do as we increase yield and profitability for the farmer is to identify traits that can help reduce the impact farming has on the environment and we can using drought and nitrogen traits where we increase yield without having to add extra water to the crop or where we can increase yield without having to add additional nitrogen…will help us to meet the demands and the needs that farmers have for efficiency.”

Monsanto plans to have a drought-tolerant corn to market in the next four to five years and many other trait developers are hard at work with drought tolerance genes. Syngenta has licensed drought tolerance technology from Performance Plants and Bayer is also working on stress tolerance traits. Monsanto’s Grant theorizes that the demand for drought-tolerant crops may provide an opportunity to revive biotech wheat development as well saying, “The opportunity in wheat is in water management.”

“Climate change is on everybody”s mind right now. It”s one of the key issues that we face in the future. As an example agriculture uses about 70% of the fresh water that”s used around the world,” says Lawson. “We need to be able to do things that helpimproveourenvironment withthe work that we do in agriculture.” Robynne M. Anderson

Orphan Crops

While the private sector is focusing on drought tolerance, the public sector is focusing on dryland crops such as sorghum and millet. they worry about funding and opportunities for crops that naturally grow well in dry conditions. Sometimes called “orphan crops”, they are not getting the r&d investment of major cereal grains.

“the dryland engine is struggling against a headwind of policies that are biased in favor of the ‘favored lands’ (those with plenty of water). they also favor the influential urban populations that are concentrated in coastal mega-cities, and the familiar cereal grains that they consume: rice, wheat and maize,” says William dar, director General of the International crops research Institute for Semi-arid tropics.

he cites heavy export subsidies as an example of the international bias. “By artificially reducing the prices of the major grains, these policies inadvertently hobble poor dryland farmers in their struggle to compete in the local and regional marketplace by growing the drought-hardy grains: sorghum, millet and food legumes.”

to make matters worse, less than 10% of public spending in developing countries goes to agriculture even though this sector commonly accounts for about half of their Gross domestic Product. and less than 1% of public spending goes to agricultural research. of that 1%, only a small proportion is invested in dryland agriculture.

“We suspect that the world may come to regret its under-investment in dryland grain crops as climate change kicks in, increasing the need for more robust, drought-hardy crops and crop traits for plant breeding,” says dar. “arguably, the dryland crops should receive extra attention from public-interest groups, since the more favored grain crops will be well-covered by many private sector and government agencies.”

For more IWMI and www.imw