Agriculture Will Remain The Dominant User Of Water

Irrigation-water management has a log way to adapt to the increasing production requirements, however water-saving technologies are already available and can significantly reduce the waste of water. If incentives are in place, as increasing the price of irrigation water, farmers will adopt water-saving irrigation technologies. The main technologies likely to be used in developing countries, where labour is normally abundant but capital scarce, are underground and drip irrigation.

Both technologies depend on the frequent application of small amounts of water as directly as possible to the roots of crops. Reducing the pollution loads of water used by farms, industries and urban areas would enable much more of it to be re-used in irrigation. There are enormous potential benefits to be had from the use of wastewater for irrigation.

Agriculture will remain the dominant user of water at the global level. In many countries, in particular those situated in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world, this dependency can be expected to intensify. The contribution of irrigated agriculture to food production is substantial but in future the rate of growth will be lower than in the past. Both irrigated and non-irrigated agriculture still have scope for increasing productivity, including water productivity. Arguably, the expansion of irrigated agriculture protected people on the nutritional fringe from premature death, and preserved tracts of land under forest and wetlands from encroachment by hard-pressed farmers.