The agricultural community has a challenge of increasing food production by more than 70% to meet demand from the global population increase by the mid-21st century. Sustainable food production involves the sustained availability of resources, such as water and energy, to agriculture. The key challenges to sustainable food production are population increase, increasing demands for food, climate change, and climate variability, decreasing per capita land and water resources. To discuss more details on (a) the challenges for sustainable food production and (b) mitigation options available, a special issue on “Water Management for Sustainable Food Production” was assembled. The special issue focused on issues such as irrigation using brackish water, virtual water trade, allocation of water resources, consequences of excess precipitation on crop yields, strategies to increase water productivity, rainwater harvesting, irrigation water management, deficit irrigation, and fertilization, environmental and socio-economic impacts, and irrigation water quality. Articles covered several water-related issues across the U.S., Asia, Middle-East, Africa, and Pakistan for sustainable food production. The articles in the special issue highlight the substantial impacts on agricultural production, water availability, and water quality in the face of increasing demands for food and energy.

Arsenic poisoning constitutes a major threat to humans, causing various health problems. Almost everywhere across the world certain “hotspots” have been detected, putting in danger the local populations, due to the potential consumption of water or food contaminated with elevated concentrations of arsenic. According to the relevant studies, Asia shows the highest percentage of significantly contaminated sites, followed by North America, Europe, Africa, South America and Oceania. The presence of arsenic in ecosystems can originate from several natural or anthropogenic activities. Arsenic can be then gradually accumulated in different food sources, such as vegetables, rice and other crops, but also in seafood, etc., and in water sources (mainly in groundwater, but also to a lesser extent in surface water), potentially used as drinking-water supplies, provoking their contamination and therefore potential health problems to the consumers. This review reports the major areas worldwide that present elevated arsenic concentrations in food and water sources. Furthermore, it also discusses the sources of arsenic contamination at these sites, as well as selected treatment technologies, aiming to remove this pollutant mainly from the contaminated waters and thus the reduction and prevention of population towards arsenic exposure.

The project titled “The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Global, Basin and Local Case Studies of Resource Use Efficiency under Growing Natural Resource Scarcity“ (2015-2018), which was supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, and was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems. The project set out to develop research methodologies and insights globally as well as for the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Organization (ENTRO) of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to support efforts for enhanced water, energy and food security and environmental sustainability. The toolkit describes both qualitative and quantitative methods that have been used in the research project. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of information and tools related to the analysis of the water, energy and food (WEF) nexus. The overall focus of the tools has been on economic analysis of the linkages across water, energy and food--to complement other studies and method developments that focus on biophysical linkages across the WEF nexus. The toolkit is aimed, primarily, at researchers interested in the analysis of the water, energy and food nexus. However, the studies summarized here also provide insights for practitioners implementing Nexus projects. | Non-PR | IFPRI1; CRP5; The Water Energy Food Nexus | EPTD; DSGD | CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE)

The increasing global demand for natural rubber (100% increase in the last 15 years) is for most part met by Malaysia and Indonesia, and – to a lesser extent – other countries in South-East Asia and Africa. The consequent expansion of rubber plantation has often occurred at the expenses of agricultural land for staple crops, particularly in South-East Asia, where 90% of the land suitable for agriculture is already under cultivation. Here we investigate the extent to which the ongoing increase in rubber production is competing with the food system and affecting the livelihoods of rural communities living in the production areas and their appropriation of natural resources, such as water. We also investigate to what extent the expansion of rubber plantations is taking place through large scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) and evaluate the impacts on rural communities. Our results show how rubber production needs more than 10 million ha of fertile land and up to 136–149 × 10⁹ m³ y⁻¹ of freshwater (125 × 10⁹ m³ y⁻¹ of green water and 11–24 × 10⁹ m³ y⁻¹ of blue water). These resources would be sufficient to produce enough food to significantly reduce malnourishment in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam if replaced by rice production. Overall, natural rubber production has important environmental, social, and economic impacts. Indeed, despite their ability to bring employment and increase the average income of economically disadvantaged areas, rubber plantations may threaten the local water and food security and induce a loss of rural livelihoods – particularly when the new plantations result from LSLAs that displace semi-subsistence forms of production – thereby forcing the local populations to depend on global food markets.

According to estimates by the International Land Coalition based at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 57 million hectares of land have been leased to foreign investors since 2007. Current research has focused on human rights issues related to inward investment in land but has been ignorant of water resource issues and the challenges of managing scarce water. This handbook will be the first to address inward investment in land and its impact on water resources in Africa. The geographical scope of this book will be the African continent, where land has attracted the attention of risk-taking investors because much land is under-utilised marginalized land, with associated water resources and rapidly growing domestic food markets. The successful implementation of investment strategies in African agriculture could determine the future of more than one billion people. An important factor to note is that sub-Saharan Africa will, of all the continents, be hit hardest by climate change, population growth and food insecurity. Sensible investment in agriculture is therefore needed, however, at what costs and at whose expense? The book will also address the livelihoods theme and provide a holistic analysis of land and water grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa. Four other themes will addressed: politics, economics, the environment and the history of land investments in sub-Saharan Africa. The editors have involved a highly diverse group of expert researchers, who will review the pro- and anti-investment arguments, geopolitics, the role of capitalist investors, the environmental contexts and the political implications of, and reasons for, leasing millions of hectares in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, there has been no attempt to review land investments through a suite of different lenses, thus this handbook will differ significantly from existing research and publication.