Closing the yield gap while ensuring water sustainability
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 24 September 2018
- journal article
- research article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Environmental Research Letters
- Vol. 13 (10), 104002
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aadeef
Abstract
Water is a major factor limiting crop production in many regions around the world. Irrigation can greatly enhance crop yields, but the local availability and timing of freshwater resources constrains the ability of humanity to increase food production. Innovations in irrigation infrastructure have allowed humanity to utilize previously inaccessible water resources, enhancing water withdrawals for agriculture while increasing pressure on environmental flows and other human uses. While substantial additional water will be required to support future food production, it is not clear whether and where freshwater availability is sufficient to sustainably close the yield gap in cultivated lands. The extent to which irrigation can be expanded within presently rainfed cropland without depleting environmental flows remains poorly understood. Here we perform a spatially explicit biophysical assessment of global consumptive water use for crop production under current and maximum attainable yield scenarios assuming current cropping practices. We then compare these present and anticipated water consumptions to local water availability to examine potential changes in water scarcity. We find that global water consumption for irrigation could sustainably increase by 48% (408 km3 H2O yr−1)—expanding irrigation to 26% of currently rainfed cultivated lands (2.67 × 106 km2) and producing 37% (3.38 × 1015 kcal yr−1) more calories, enough to feed an additional 2.8 billion people. If current unsustainable blue water consumption (336 km3 yr−1) and production (1.19 × 1015 kcal yr−1) practices were eliminated, a sustainable irrigation expansion and intensification would still enable a 24% increase in calorie (2.19 × 1015 kcal yr−1) production. Collectively, these results show that the sustainable expansion and intensification of irrigation in selected croplands could contribute substantially to achieving food security and environmental goals in tandem in the coming decades.Funding Information
- The Ermenegildo Zegna Founder’s Scholarship
- The Nature Conservancy’s NatureNet Science Fellows Program
- Columbia University’s Data Science Institute Fellows program
This publication has 79 references indexed in Scilit:
- Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050PLOS ONE, 2013
- Closing yield gaps through nutrient and water managementNature, 2012
- Green Revolution: Impacts, limits, and the path aheadProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012
- Groundwater depletion and sustainability of irrigation in the US High Plains and Central ValleyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012
- The water footprint of humanityProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012
- Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agricultureProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
- A PRESUMPTIVE STANDARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL FLOW PROTECTIONRiver Research and Applications, 2011
- Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensificationProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and useProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Geomorphometric attributes of the global system of rivers at 30-minute spatial resolutionJournal of Hydrology, 2000