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Feeding a Growing Earth:

The Challenge of Food Supply and Water Sustainability

limate scientists have been warning for a number of

years about the consequences that climate change
will have on the global food supply and food security.
Additionally, the Guardian recently reported that within
a decade, 2.9 billion people in 48 nations will experience
chronic water scarcity. The challenge of feeding a rapidly
growing population on a hotter, drier earth must be met
if we are to sustain an estimated population of 10 billion
people by the year 2050. This was the topic of discussion as
APCOs International Advisory Council met in April 2015.
Dan Glickman, former U.S. secretary of agriculture, opened the
discussion stating that we have a huge need for additional food
supplies over the next 30 years as the population grows from
about 7 billion people to about 9.5 billion people, particularly in
the developing world where there will be a huge growth in food
needs. At that pace, we need to increase production between
70 to 100 percent from what we currently produce, unless we
are able to develop ways to significantly increase yields. This
urgency has placed the issue of food supply and food security
on the agendas of the G7 and the G20, whereas 15 years ago
these issues were not a priority among high-level government
leaders.
As weve seen in California, the issue of water is also a growing
concern among policy-makers and the business community.
About 70 percent of the water in the world is used for irrigation
of crops, so only 30 percent is used for everything else, which
includes human consumption, industrial consumption and
the like. So as the world becomes more urbanized, and the
growing population necessitates doubling the amount of food
production, there is a conflict between urban and rural interests
as we try to allocate a more scarce water supply.
The water issue is particularly acute. It involves how we
generate less thirsty varieties of crops and animals in the future
versus the water intensive crops we currently grow. This will
involve a great deal of discussion of new technologies, research
and development, as well as financing. How do we finance
better use of water, water conservation techniques and new
types of crops that we are going to need to grow in the future?
To illustrate the concern, water tables are falling dramatically all
over the world. Even in the United States, where we feed large
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amounts of animals necessitating massive amounts of water,

the water tables are dropping. The day of reckoning is coming.
Water is a little different than oil, because it recharges and
falls from the sky, and some places get too much water but
many places get too little water and climate change is certainly
going to have an impact. But soon we are going to have to feed
another 2.5 billion people with probably no more land and no
more water, so notwithstanding the fact that we havent had the
crisis in water that weve had in energy, its going to come.

stages of their production. For example, it requires 2,500

liters of water to ultimately produce one hamburger when you
consider the amount of water required for the grain to feed
the animals, the grain to produce the bread, and so forth. That
has a very direct impact on what many countries are doing by
purchasing or renting farmland in foreign parts of the world and
then exporting the produce back to their home countries. They
are in effect taking water from those countries and importing it
to themselves.

Energy is price sensitive. Water is not price-sensitive. Most

governments dont charge for water, because that would be a
very politically opportunistic thing to do. The pricing of water
is generally totally unrelated to market forces, as opposed to
energy, for the obvious political reasons. A few places, like
California, have tried their best to address this, but the fact
remains that if we priced water according to market forces, we
wouldnt need these new engineering solutions. Its just very
difficult to do politically in the world. So the question is how we
deal with the issue of feeding the world and giving industry and
people opportunities to have water, yet do it in a way where
its totally unrelated to the economics of water. Thats a real
challenge for us.

So there already exists a massive trade globally in terms of

water, its just encapsulated in the product. Its necessary to
understand the enormity of the challenge; its not simply a
challenge of there not being enough water.

These present enormous challenges. How are we going to

produce 50 percent to 100 percent more food? How are we
going to do it sustainably? How are we going to do it without
enormous use of inputs like pesticides and fertilizer? And how
are we going to do it with less water?
No industry is impacted by climate as much as agriculture,
because no industry other than perhaps the resort or recreation
industries are outdoors. So agriculture is the most dependent
and the most vulnerable industry to climate change, and you
can see that happening already worldwide with the production
of crops in the northern hemisphere.
Agriculture and food issues are huge factors and present
large hurdles for potential trade agreements, particularly
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade
and Investment Promotion (T-TIP). In Asia-Pacific they are a
big stumbling block. U.S. Congress reluctance to grant the
president authority to negotiate trade agreements is related as
much to agriculture as anything else.
Discussing the water issue, Nic Labuschagne, senior director
of strategy in APCOs Dubai office, remarked that the biggest
challenge with irrigation is not just the adequacy of water, but
the residue it leaves behind in the fields. As we drain more
of the aquifers and the river water gets reused repeatedly,
often as a result of drainage or fields that have already been
fertilized, the fields become salted to the extent that they
basically become barren. So thats a major challenge for a lot of
agricultural land at the moment right now.
Another issue is the concept of virtual water. Its not really
something thats in familiar usage yet, but most products that
we consume require huge amounts of water at the various

Karen Hulebak, former chairman of the Codex Alimentarius

Commission and a chief scientist at the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, noted that people have been saying for two
decades that water is going to be the next oil, yet it hasnt
happened. So it might be useful to consider the factors that
have caused water not to rise to the level of importance that
we all seem to think it does really have. What is different about
our current situation that is going to make water take on that
really critical importance? Are things now really different? Whats
going to make it really be taken seriously by governments and
companies?
Climate change may be an instructive connection to consider.
Its easy to deny climate change and its easy to deny water
shortage when water is in overabundance of so many parts of
the world. As we think about how to capitalize on the factors
that make it so important and raise the consciousness of
people, it would be instructive to think about the factors that
have made it not be taken so seriously in the past, even though
water tables have been falling for a long time.
Derek Yach, former senior vice president of global health and
agriculture policy at PepsiCo, remarked that the political reality
of water is playing out across the Middle East and resulted in
major agricultural policy changes in Saudi Arabia, for example,
banning wheat growing because of the changes in the water
table. Potatoes are going to come next, leading to the land
grab and the land needs across Africa. So this is having
significant political effects, which are not being spoken about
enough.
In sum, three takeaways from the discussion are:
1. There needs to be a serious discussion on how the global
community can meet the demand of feeding a growing
population with a finite amount of arable land.
2. Increased food production will put enormous strain on the
global water supply, exacerbated by the declining level of
water tables around the world.
3. Climate change will be a significant factor in the balance
between the production of food and the world water
supply, and the issue needs to be a high priority for both
government and the business community.
Driving Global Dialogue
For more information, please visit www.apcoworldwide.com/forum
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