Dear HLPE Project Team and Steering Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide input and comments to the draft consultation paper, “Water and Food Security” that is being prepared for the UN Committee on World Food Security. The subject is of critical importance to humanity’s prospects for sustainably producing nourishing food for current and future generations; and to do so in balance with our planet’s resource constraints and dynamically changing climatic and environmental conditions.
Clearly, ‘Water and Food Security’ is a complex, multi-dimensional relationship that embraces global and regional hydrologic cycles; disparate agronomic practices; watershed and landscape ecosystem dynamics; and social, cultural and economic factors that all contribute to our prospects for achieving healthy, prosperous and equitable societies. Given these complexities, I appreciate the project team’s efforts to describe, document and recommend a set of strategies that could be adopted in farmers’ fields; in technology research and development; in governance of water rights and usage; in public policies that shape private sector practices and investments; and in other disciplines. Your draft paper has made an admirable effort to articulate these important challenges and opportunities for action.
However, I am concerned that the present draft does not present a sufficiently coherent and forceful assessment of the challenges, conflicting forces and most promising strategies for implementing local, regional and global water and food security. In my view, despite being nearly 100 pages in length, the paper fails to draw attention to the most important issues and actions that are needed to promote and improve more productive and water efficient agricultural practices and to advocate for the public and private sector frameworks that are needed to accomplish these objectives.
This consultative paper is far too general in its statements and findings of facts and recommendations of best ways forward. While it provides many relevant comments and examples; much of what is written is difficult to comprehend. While only a draft, the paper needs thorough editing for clarity; and to more effectively present its key messages. The paper should also employ a more narrative organizational format and structure for its findings that provide greater granularity of ‘subject headers’ (e.g. bold font designations) that clearly focus the reader’s attention to the important points being made. The paper would be significantly improved with the inclusion of an executive summary at the beginning that concisely defines the challenges, issues and recommendations for high priority actions.
As an example, I fully agree with the statement on page 29 (lines 9-12) that “… soil moisture retention and micro-climate management are crucial strategies…agro-ecological approaches are particularly suitable for building healthy soils with higher water retention capacity…” However, this critical finding is obscured in the dense text of several paragraphs. I would encourage the paper to format key points of information or action with more easily recognized subhead titles such as: “Soil Fertility and Soil Moisture Retention Are Critical Factors for Water and Food Productivity.”
Similarly, “The Critical Role of Agro-ecological Practices in Building Healthy Soils” could be an excellent subhead title for a discussion of the importance of returning nutrients and organic carbon to soils; adopting multiple crop rotations; providing cover crops and crop residues to reduce evaporation and soil erosion; etc. These practices are widely recognized as being essential for the restoration and maintenance of fertile soils and more efficiently capturing and using water. Although the draft often mentions these actions; the points are usually hidden by verbiage and a lack of methodically presenting the argument for what actions are needed.
“Excessive Nutrient Runoff Leads to Eutrophication of Surface and Coastal Waters” would be a clear way to highlight a discussion of how poorly managed applications of chemical or organic fertilizers or livestock manure are contributing factors to water pollution; the reduction of fisheries productivity; and increased human health problems. This issue is briefly mentioned in the draft, but deserves a more thoughtful description of its negative impacts and the means by which farmers (or food processors) could change their current practices and operations to more efficiently and effectively manage and recover these unused nutrients for productive purposes.
“Soil Nutrient Mining and Poor Recycling of Post-harvest Nutrients Impair Water/Soil Productivity” is another topic that is briefly noted in the paper. However, the factors contributing to soil nutrient depletion (e.g. smallholders’ lack of access to fertilizers; limited use of micro-dosing and other precision input methods; limited reuse of crop residues and composts; limited reliance on crop rotations and N-fixing crop varieties; negligible use of mycorrhizal fungi and biofertilizers; etc.) deserve much greater attention and consideration. Furthermore, enhanced recovery and reuse of organic nutrients in food processing wastes; livestock operations; municipal wastes; etc. should also be discussed to address the need to ‘close the farm-to-table nutrient cycle’ in order to replenish soil nutrients. Given that soil fertility exhaustion is a significant limiting productivity factor even when water supplies are adequate; proper soil stewardship will be absolutely essential for farming in a water constrained future.
“Improper Irrigation Practices Can Lead to Soil Salinity” would be a useful subtitle header that precedes a discussion of the negative impact of the buildup of salts in soils that are continuously irrigated. In view of changing precipitation patterns and lengthening drought periods; irrigating what are now rainfed arable lands is certain to become a more widespread adaptation strategy. However, if such practices lead to soil salinization, the productivity of such farming regions cannot be sustained in the long term. This is an important challenge and warrants more consideration and examples of best practices that can minimize and manage such environmental degradations.
“Local Watershed and Groundwater Management Practices for Maintaining Water Tables” should be specifically discussed and prioritized in the paper. While there is some mention of such measures; this subject deserves far greater emphasis than has been presented in the draft. There are many examples of successful farmer and rural community interventions (e.g. building check dams; retaining riparian vegetative buffer areas; maintaining local rainwater harvest storage reservoirs; integration of agroforestry and crop cultivation practices; etc.) that should be noted. With a better appreciation of these measures, hopefully decision-makers would be more interested in creating conditions that enable and support rural development efforts to build and maintain such water resilience infrastructures.
“Breeding and Distributing Drought and Salinity Resistant Crops for Improved Water Use Efficiencies” is an important element of a comprehensive water and food security strategy. Surprisingly, this entire topic was barely mentioned in the paper. This oversight must be remedied with the inclusion of a discussion of various means by which public and private research collaborations; region-wide farmer cooperatives and community seed banks; increased crop diversification across staple cereals and horticultural crops; and other methods that can strengthen the vitality and resilience of crops that must adapt to changing climatic and other abiotic and biotic stresses. The same attention to breeding for improved adaptation capabilities should also be applied to livestock husbandry as well.
“Human Capacity Building for Access to Training, Technology, Capital and Governance Processes” would be an important section to include in the paper in order to address the many institutional issues and challenges that impact and constrain agriculture’s abilities and prospects for improving water and food security. The critical need to identify the ‘best agronomic practices’ for achieving higher Water Use Efficiencies (WUE); such as crop diversification, soil nutrient and watershed management, etc. must be complemented with facilitating the means by which farmers could improve their practices. This means better informed and more effective agricultural extension services; developing the next generation of agricultural and ecological systems scientists; more distributed and productive value-added capabilities in rural areas; and much more. Attention to these institutional and social-economic factors should be given as much consideration as the more field-focused practices that are covered in the paper.
I will conclude with a final comment that this paper clearly strives to introduce important information and perspectives to contribute to the Committee on World Food Security’s cogent and hopefully productive deliberations and actions. This is a very good beginning draft. I wish you well in sharpening the paper’s discussions and recommendations to advance this critical cause.
With best regards,
Patrick Binns
Seattle, WA USA
Patrick Binns