Cool clear water

There is enough fresh water in the world to double food production in the next decades -- the problem is its inefficient use, according to a study released Monday at the World Water Congress meeting in Brazil. Scientists in 30 countries spent five years analyzing river basins that cover a total of 5.2 million square miles (13.5 million square km) and are home to 1.5 billion people, including 470 million of the world's poorest. The experts studied 10 river basins around the world, including the Indus-Ganges, Mekong, and Yellow in Asia; the Limpopo, Nile and Volta basins in Africa; and the Sao Francisco and the Andes river basin in South America.

"Yes, there is scarcity in certain areas, but our findings show that the problem overall is a failure to make efficient and fair use of the water available in these river basins. This is ultimately a political challenge, not a resource concern," said said Alain Vidal with the Challenge Program on Water and Food. According to Vidal, "huge volumes of rainwater are lost or never used, particularly in the rain-fed regions of sub-Saharan Africa. With modest improvements, we can generate two to three times more food than we are producing today."

Africa has the biggest scope to increase food production in its river basins, but parts of Asia and Africa have areas where production is at least 10 percent below its potential, and in some places, productivity is only 10 percent of what it could be. For example, in the Indus and Ganges, researchers found 23 percent of rice systems are producing about half of what they could sustainably yield.

“The most surprising finding is that despite all of the pressures facing our basins today, there are relatively straightforward opportunities to satisfy our development needs and alleviate poverty for millions of people without exhausting our most precious natural resource,” said Dr. Simon Cook, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Leader of the CPWF’s Basin Focal Research Project. Cook said that the capacity to increase food production "is there, but only if we use the water in a balanced way." The key is dialogue among all those who use the water in the basin, Cook said: Farmers whose crops are rain-fed, farmers who use irrigation, herders and ranchers, city-dwellers, factory owners and workers and hydropower producers and users.

This blog has sometimes high-lighted a pending water crisis and the possible coming of future water wars. But not all is doom and gloom, it seems. SOYMB isn't at all too surprised by the revelation since it once again demonstrates the potential abundance of the world if rational decisions were made about our natural resources.

From
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/27/us-rivers-food-idUSTRE78Q0BZ20110927