Forecasts on population growth and economic development indicate that there will be substantial increases in food demand for the forthcoming decades. We focus here on the water requirements of food production, on the issue of whether there would be enough water to produce sufficient food in the future, and we offer options to face this challenge based on recent trends observed in some agricultural systems. Given the competition for water faced by the agricultural sector, and the uncertainties associated with climate change, improving the efficiency of water use in both rain-fed and irrigated systems is the main avenue to face the challenge. In rain-fed agriculture, managing the risk associated with rainfall variability is a promising option to increase productivity. In irrigated systems, a case study on the improvements in water productivity in Andalusia, Spain, is used to illustrate some of the opportunities to make progress. Progress in reducing irrigation water use in recent decades has been substantial, but decreasing the consumptive use of crops is a much more difficult challenge. The need for more research and technology transfer on improving water-limited crop production is highlighted, and emphasis is placed on interdisciplinary approaches to gain the insight needed to achieve new breakthroughs that would help in tackling this complex problem.

Water, energy, and food are essential for human well-being and for sustainable development. Water is required in almost all types of electricity generation and it is highly consumed in food production. Cities, industry, and crop production have increased their needs for water, energy and land resources, and at the same time, they are facing problems associated with the environmental degradation and, in some regions, resource scarcity. This paper proposes a multiobjective optimization model for the design of a water distribution network from a water–energy–food nexus point of view. Additionally, crop production and cost relationships are integrated to account for the water and energy requirements in the agricultural sector. The economic objective is the maximization of annual gross profit, which accounts for the water, energy and food production; the environmental objective establishes the minimization of overall greenhouse gas emissions, and the social objective is the maximization of the number of jobs. In this paper, because the objectives are opposites, a multistakeholder assessment is proposed in order to analyze and quantify the relationship of the water–energy–food nexus to assess synergies that improve the decision-making process. The mathematical model was applied to a case study located in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico, in which, a series of scenarios were solved to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed optimization approach. The results show strong trade-offs between the considered objectives as well as the quantification of the water–energy–food nexus.

Afghanistan is a headwater state that contributes supplies to several countries in Central and South Asia. However, despite being a water source, it faces the challenge of establishing its own storage infrastructure and water-sharing methods to protect its food security. This article investigates impacts on the Afghan agricultural sector resulting from enhanced reservoir storage capacity and better-performing water-sharing methods. An integrated systems analysis is formulated to analyze the economic performance of both interventions. Results reveal that both interventions show the highest capacity to improve food security in conditions where water supply shows the greatest natural fluctuations.

Food and water security are directly linked through the agricultural sector and food production and processing. Increasing stresses on food and water resources, influenced by factors such as population growth and climate change, threaten global food and water security. Previous studies have attempted to address this issue with the development of various modeling frameworks, often combining food security and water security models to address the inter-relationship between the two concepts. This study first introduces some of the background and foundational principles behind food and water security models, then critically reviews models that jointly analyze the two concepts. Initially, the dynamic definitions and historic development of water and food security concepts are reviewed. Current global hydrological models and food production/consumption models are then discussed to provide requisite background on available modeling platforms that separately assess water and food security. This study then focuses on an evaluation of ten models that assess food and water security from an interdisciplinary perspective, providing in-depth analysis regarding input parameters, model processes, advantages and limitations. Results suggest that there is a need to further develop input datasets as well as spatial and temporal resolution in existing food and water security models. This will provide the foundation for the development of effective policies and strategies to mitigate future food and water security issues, while considering the protection of the natural environment.

The purpose of the study is to assess whether Corporate Social Responsibility regarding water is considered relevant for sustainability in companies related to agriculture in South Africa, considering that their impact directly influences public access to water. To accomplish this purpose, a qualitative approach was developed through the study of the 22 existing companies from the agriculture sector, food and beverages, forest and paper production, and Tobacco, which published their last integrated report within the Global Reporting Initiative framework. A thematic content analysis was carried out, involving the analysis of the written sustainability reports. For data analyses, ATLAS.ti 7.1 software was used to match the main aspects related to water management. Pragmatic advice for practitioners derives from the research results, considering that Corporate Social Responsibility in general—and sustainable water management in particular—represents an opportunity for companies to get competitive advantages in the market. The study also determines the best practices in the field in South Africa with benchmarking purposes.

Given its potentialities and characteristics, energy generation, food production, and water availability have a strong interdependency and correlation. Water is needed to produce energy and food, while energy is required to produce water and food. This nexus brings several challenges when scarce water resources must be allocated among competing uses, often in the form of unexpected tradeoffs. Addressing those challenges requires knowledge about the water–food–energy nexus and the associated tradeoffs to support water allocation and management decisions. Those tradeoffs are still not properly understood in the uncertain and stochastic context of water availability. When not properly accounted for, the results are conflicts, loss of investments, environmental impacts, and limited effectiveness of sectoral policies, all of which undermine a country’s development model relying on water and energy security. This paper addresses the competitive uses of recent irrigated agriculture expansion and existing hydropower production in a Brazilian watershed with water conflicts, assessing the economic tradeoffs and water values between energy and irrigated agricultural production under uncertainty. An explicitly stochastic hydro-economic model is used to determine water’s economic value and its variation in space and time. Results indicate that the agricultural benefits outweigh the potential energy losses, and the best course of action should explore an economically compensated reallocation strategy, upon negotiation among users, rather than imposing water supply cutbacks to the agriculture sector.

At global scale, the majority of world water withdrawal is for the agricultural sector, with differences among countries depending on the relevance of agri-food sector in the economy. Virtual water and water footprint could be useful to express the impact on the water resources of each production process and good with the objective to lead to a sustainable use of water at a global level. International trade could be connected to the virtual water flows, in fact through commodities importation, water poor countries can save their own water resources. The present paper focuses on the bilateral virtual water flows connected to the top ten agri-food products traded between Italy and China. Comparing the virtual water flow related to the top 10 agri-food products, the virtual water flow from Italy to China is bigger than the water flow in the opposite direction. Moreover, the composition of virtual water flows is different; Italy imports significant amounts of grey water from China, depending on the different environmental strategies adopted by the two selected countries. This difference could be also related to the fact that traded commodities are very different; the 91% of virtual water imported by Italy is connected to crops products, while the 95% of virtual water imported by China is related to the animal products. Considering national water saving and global water saving, appears that Italy imports virtual water from China while China exerts pressure on its water resources to supply the exports to Italy. This result at global scale implies a global water loss of 129.29millionm3 because, in general, the agri-food products are traded from the area with lower water productivity to the area with the higher water productivity.

This paper presents the first groundwater‒energy‒food (GEF) nexus study of Iran’s agronomic crops based on national and provincial datasets and firsthand estimates of agricultural groundwater withdrawal. We use agronomic crop production, water withdrawal, and energy consumption data to estimate groundwater withdrawal from electric-powered irrigation wells and examine agronomic productivity in Iran’s 31 provinces through the lens of GEF nexus. The ex-post GEF analysis sheds light on some of the root causes of the nation’s worsening water shortage problems. Access to highly subsidized water (surface water and groundwater) and energy has been the backbone of agricultural expansion policies in Iran, supporting employment in agrarian communities. Consequently, water use for agronomic crop production has greatly overshot the renewable water supply capacity of the country, making water bankruptcy a serious national security threat. Significant groundwater table decline across the country and increasing energy consumption underscore dysfunctional feedback relations between agricultural water and energy price and groundwater withdrawal in an inefficient agronomic sector. Thus, it is essential to implement holistic policy reforms aimed at reducing agricultural water consumption to alleviate the looming water bankruptcy threats, which can lead to the loss of numerous agricultural jobs in the years to come.

Water scarcity severely affects drylands threatening their food security, whereas, the oil and gas industry produces significant and increasing volumes of produced water that could be partly reused for agricultural irrigation in these regions. In this review, we summarise recent research and provide a broad overview of the potential for oil and gas produced water to irrigate food crops in drylands. The quality of produced water is often a limiting factor for the reuse in irrigation as it can lead to soil salinisation and sodification. Although the inappropriate use of produced water in irrigation could be damaging for the soil, the agricultural sector in dry areas is often prone to challenges in soil salinity. There is a lack of knowledge about the main environmental and economic conditions that could encourage or limit the development of irrigation with oil and gas effluents at the scale of drylands in the world. Cheaper treatment technologies in combination with farm-based salinity management techniques could make the reuse of produced water relevant to irrigate high value-crops in hyper-arid areas. This review paper approaches an aspect of the energy-water-food nexus: the opportunities and challenges behind the reuse of abundant oil and gas effluents for irrigation in hydrocarbon-rich but water-scarce and food-unsecured drylands.

Demands for water, food, and energy are rising owing to increasing population and growing economy. Agriculture is the main source of food and is the largest consumer of water and has therefore the greatest impact on water security. It also greatly affects energy security and is also the main source of non-point source pollution. Changes in the availability of water, energy, and land are driven by uncertainties in nature and strongly affect food production, with severe implications for the security of water–food–energy nexus (WFEN). Thus, a coordinated and effective management of WFEN in the agricultural sector is needed. This paper therefore proposes an integrated modelling approach for the optimization of agricultural WFEN in a random environment. The approach quantifies the interactions and feedbacks within agricultural water, food and energy subsystems, making tradeoffs between agricultural benefit and environmental impacts, which will serve as sustainability indicators for agricultural systems, including crop farming and livestock farming. The incorporation of stochastic mathematical programming in the modeling framework aids in understanding how strategies and comprehensive benefits change under different scenarios. The approach was applied in a real-world case study in an irrigation district in northeast China. The development and implementation of such an integrated approach are anticipated to be applied in other agriculture-centered regions to guide policies of sustainable water, food, energy and land resources management.