المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Dear Sir,

Allow me to present the following brief comments on the report:

1. The Report provides a comprehensive examination of a range of issues related to the complexity of water and food security interrelationships. Many of these are captured in Fig.1. It is an important and critical contribution to global policy debates.

2. In general, I don't think the report provides sufficient examination of the food-non-food production relationships in agriculture, which are critical to income and (therefore) non-own production relationships and food security. There is a need to break down agriculture as described in the report per types of crop, animal husbandry and other outputs.

3. The report explicitly focuses on farming, but in reality provides little exploration of farmers -- they tend to be regarded as a homogenised group, undifferentiated in scale, scope, gender and geographical variation. Breaking down the complexity of this global community is essential to understanding the management challenge for the 70% or more of water that passes through farmers' fields, crops and range of technologies.

4. Virtual water is mentioned, as is water footprinting, but there is little examination of the 'missing middle', i.e. local, regional and global trade in food, global demand and supply shifts and the roles of key governments and corporations.

5. The concluding recommendations are on the whole sound. If the right to sufficient water to meet the FSN requirements of the poor is to be developed further, very clear guidance will be needed on thresholds of water need per different agro-ecologies, as well as specific metrics on understanding the local complexities of defining 'water efficiency' in different types of agriculture. These are not insurmountable challenges.

Kindest Regards,

Dr Alan Nicol