Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
IV . Water as a major limiting factor of food production
Water consumption in urban centers can be roughly described at 70 percent industrial, 20 percent
institutional and 10 percent domestic. In all regions except Europe, however, the largest consumer of
water is agriculture. It consumes some 65 to 70 percent globally 19. In Africa and South Asia, two areas
with very high rates of hunger and malnutrition, even 84 percent of water are consumed by agriculture. It
should also be noted that industrial agriculture is the biggest polluter of water due to pesticides,
phosphates and nitrates. Urban and in particular industrial water are increasing, which may divert water
from agriculture. Agricultural yields in many areas, however, are highly dependent on irrigation: The
FAO observes that availability of fresh water is likely to be the major factor limiting food production.
While it is true that hunger and malnutrition today have more to do with lacking purchasing power or
lacking access to land and other resources than with the overall national availability of food, a return of
scarcity due to lack of irrigation water would dramatically increase the number of the hungry and
malnourished. Besides the overuse and destruction of the water cycle (and loss of topsoil) there will be
another factor which would lead to additional malnutrition: Climate change will lead to changes in the
agricultural production patters – with some countries (basically in the global North) gaining and others
losing. The production losses will mainly occur in some 40 countries of the global south (with altogether
2 billion inhabitants – 450 million of them currently malnourished) and could drastically swell the ranks
of the malnourished. 20 Climate change would also effect the water cycle. By the year 2050 half the
world’s population of some 9.3 billion could be living in conditions of malnutrition and poverty.
There is still considerable scope for food production – even outside the perview of the green revolution -
on the fields of marginalized peasants in the South, which currently feed more than 2 billion people.
Their production could probably be at least doubled. 21 The rising yields of green revolution technologies
on the most fertile soils (feeding 2.5 billion people) seem to have reached their ecological limits (in terms
of land degradation, salinity and water use).
In 1994-96 the South had some 702 million hectars under rainfed cultivation of major food and fiber
crops. The irrigated area amounted to an additional 208 million hectars.
Land with cultivation potential (suitable and very suitable) amounts to 1.872 million hectars, 433 million,
however, in forest ecosystems. Irrigation does not make much of a difference in bringing hitherto
uncultivable land into production. The importance of irrigation, however, is in providing a stable water
supply in areas of rainfall variability. In the tropics resp. subtropics, irrigation can increase maximum
yields of wheat by 20 resp. 30 percent, of rice by 24 resp. 35 percent and of maize by 23 resp 37
percent.
Irrigation is a very important pillar of food production in the global South: More than half of the cereals
produced in the South (56%) are due to irrigation. For cereals and non-cereal crops together the
percentage due to irrigation in the South is still as high as 40%. 54% of irrigated land in the South is
located in India and China – countries inhabited by more than one third of humankind.
The impact of irrigation on the remaining cultivable land is still considerable. For staple food and oil
crops the increase would be in the range of 13 to 30 percent. For sugar crops and cotton even more.
Future food production in the South (on all currently cultivated and all potentially cultivated land) is
sensitive to irrigation. The importance of irrigation can be understood by comparing yields under rain-fed
and irrigated multiple cropping to yields under rain fed multiple cropping on all currently cultivated and
potentially cultivated land: The difference in increase would amount to 40%.
FIAN International 118
June 2002