How much fresh water is used for agriculture?
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Sometimes, numbers can startle you. Like this one: A tomato is more than 90 percent water. Or this one: Of all the fresh water used by people around the world, more than two-thirds goes to agriculture … and much of it is flat-out wasted. This is, no doubt, a startling state of affairs — more startling than all the water sucked up by that ripe, juicy tomato. But it’s also an opportunity. We feed billions now despite all our waste. Imagine what we can do when we get our act together. Learn More Let’s get one thing straight. People absolutely need water for crop irrigation. As the world’s population blooms over the next 50 years, we’ll need more water for crops, not less. In fact, scientists estimate that we’ll need to double our supply of fresh water by 2050 to meet all of humanity’s water needs. Yet at current rates of loss, the remaining 11 percent of freshwater ecosystems that provide people with all of these services will be gone by the same year. How can we respond? - We need to use agricultural water much more efficiently.
- We must combine these efforts with management of entire ecosystems — from river catchments all the way to the ocean — to maintain freshwater species and services.
What We’re Doing In the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Conservation International (CI) is studying the region’s extensive system of underground streams and lakes — sacred groundwater that once supported the Mayan civilization. In part, this means measuring how agriculture affects the area’s extraordinary biodiversity. But it also means assessing human water use and needs so that the area’s indigenous people continue to have clean water. In the end, we’ll come up with a water-use plan that makes suggestions on how the Yucatan can support both more tourism and more agriculture without damaging water supplies. If this effort is successful, we’ll be able to replicate it around the world. Thanks so much for your support agriculture image © CI/photo by Haroldo Castro
farmer's market image © istockphoto
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