Food security under water scarcity: a comparative analysis of Egypt and Jordan.

Although there seems enough water available for our global food needs, there are large areas with growing water scarcity. Food security in these water scarce areas cannot be met through self-sufficiency. The only option is to become more dependent on food imports which is increasingly risky due to volatility in production and food prices. Before 2008, declining food prices and increasing global cereal production favoured the food import strategy. The 2008 world food crisis represented a shock to this strategy and renewed attention was paid to the self-sufficiency strategy. The aim of this paper is to compare the food security strategies of Egypt and Jordan, two water-stressed, increasingly populated, oil-poor countries, pre and post 2008, by means of a food-water analytical framework using FAOSTAT data. Findings show that Egypt and Jordan have many similarities in their food security situation as both are highly dependent on food imports (Egypt 50%, Jordan 95%), and both have a reduced capacity to absorb future price increases. As food imports are inevitable under the water scarce context of Egypt and Jordan, it is important to focus on how to cope with volatilities. Our analysis shows that Jordan has better absorbed the costs of rising food imports than Egypt and that Egypt is trapped by its high domestic cereal production. Having revealed the limited options available to water-scarce countries for food security, we discuss the potential of grain reserves to cope with future price hikes and production shocks. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12571-022-01310-y.

Food security vulnerability due to trade dependencies on Russia and Ukraine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is disrupting global agricultural commodity markets, creating pressure on wheat supplies and stocks and consequently on food prices. The wider effects are felt around the world due to the dependencies inherent to global trade. But how to assess the vulnerability of countries food security and how to deal with it? To assess for which countries food security is at risk, dependencies along with a set of coping capacity indicators to absorb shocks need to be identified. Addressing vulnerabilities at this scale requires a global food security approach, because the food security of vulnerable countries depends on measure taken by other countries, together with a holistic approach to water, energy and food security. The Russian invasion brings to the fore the need to reassess the socio-economic value of agriculture and open trade, in terms of food security for stability in vulnerable regions.

Organic inputs to reduce nitrogen export via leaching and runoff: A global meta-analysis.

Organic inputs as a substitution for, or addition to, chemical fertilizers can potentially mitigate N losses. However, it is not well known how their effects on N leaching and runoff depend on application approaches. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 129 studies to compare the effects of organic inputs on N export via leaching and runoff. We compared three application approaches: chemical fertilizer N substituted by organic fertilizer with: 1) equal amounts of total N or, 2) equal amounts of mineral N and 3) additional organic fertilizer N on top of chemical fertilizer. The meta-analysis showed that organic inputs reduced overall N leaching and runoff by 15% and 29%, respectively, without compromising crop yield, and that this effect was significantly influenced by the application approach taken. Organic substitution of chemical fertilizer N with equal amounts of total N decreased both leaching and runoff by more than 30% and hardly affected crop yield. Substitution with equal amounts of mineral N generally increased crop yield by 6% but also increased N leaching by 21%. Organic inputs in addition to chemical fertilizer N did not affect leaching and runoff. The differences between application approaches were reinforced with increased treatment duration. The loss ratios of leaching and runoff were 14% and 4.5%, respectively, from chemical fertilizer, and 9.2% and 2.6%, respectively, from organic fertilizer. The optimal substitution rates differed between leaching (40-60%) and runoff (60-100%) when substitution was based on equal amounts of total N. We conclude that substitution of chemical for organic fertilizer at equal amounts of total N is most effective in reducing N export via leaching and runoff without compromising crop production.

SDG indicator 6.4.1 "change in water use efficiency over time": Methodological flaws and suggestions for improvement.

Sustainable Development Goal indicator 6.4.1 is defined as the change in water use efficiency over time and measured as the change in the ratio of gross economic value added by irrigated agriculture, industry and the services sector to the volume of water withdrawn over time. The rationale behind this indicator is to decouple a country's economic growth from its water use. Yet, this unwittingly results in an economic distortion of the water balance, favouring increased water withdrawal in service of higher water-use efficiency, at the expense of environmental sustainability. This paper discusses three methodological flaws. First, aggregation of only economic values across all sectors ignores social and environmental values and is very sensitive to changes in the relative water use by agriculture versus industry and services. Second, the economic value derived from agriculture and from imports cannot in fact be decoupled from agricultural water use. Third, the indicator completely ignores the effects of diminished return flows to the environment due to increased re-use of water. A novel alternative, disaggregated WUE approach is therefore proposed, which links water consumption to the water balance. It is defined as the economic value of irrigated and rainfed agriculture combined with water consumption (ETa) by rainfed and irrigated agriculture per area based on earth observation data. It is measured as the change in the ratio of gross economic value added by irrigated and rainfed agriculture to the volume of water consumed by rainfed and irrigated agriculture over time. This approach is more consistent and objective, while being methodologically, hydrologically and environmentally sound. It acknowledges the coupling of economic growth and water depletion, and the need to strike a balance between opportunities for economic growth and environmental sustainability. This better serves the full breadth of the water and sanitation goal as defined in SDG 6.

Questioning triple rice intensification on the Vietnamese mekong delta floodplains: An environmental and economic analysis of current land-use trends and alternatives.

Large areas of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta floodplains (VMDF) are protected by high dikes to facilitate three rice crops per year. While this has increased rice production, there is evidence that triple rice systems have negative long-term effects, both environmental and economic. Double rice cropping, or other alternatives, may be more advantageous. We analyzed the costs and benefits of intensive rice systems over time and compared these with alternatives farming systems, based on data collected via field surveys and interviews with farmers in two provinces in the VMDF. Results show that farmers in areas with dikes high enough for triple rice production incurred rising production costs over time. Production costs were 58%-91% higher in high-dike, triple crop areas, than in low-dike double rice crop areas. Higher production costs are mainly the result of increased fertilizer and pesticide use. Profitability of triple rice farming systems was initially 57% more compared to double crop systems. After about 15 years, however, triple rice farmers earned only 6% more than double crop counterparts. Our results indicate that alternative farming systems, such as rice combined with vegetables, fisheries or other flood-based livelihood, could offer greater benefits than intensive rice monocultures. Importantly, these higher benefits can be obtained without the environmental costs and impact currently endured across the delta with triple rice cultivation in high dikes.

Economics of social trade-off: Balancing wastewater treatment cost and ecosystem damage.

We have developed a social optimization model that integrates the financial and ecological costs associated with wastewater treatment and ecosystem damage. The social optimal abatement level of water pollution is determined by finding the trade-off between the cost of pollution control and its resulting ecosystem damage. The model is applied to data from the Lake Taihu region in China to demonstrate this trade-off. A wastewater treatment cost function is estimated with a sizable sample from China, and an ecological damage cost function is estimated following an ecosystem service valuation framework. Results show that the wastewater treatment cost function has economies of scale in facility capacity, and diseconomies in pollutant removal efficiency. Results also show that a low value of the ecosystem service will lead to serious ecological damage. One important policy implication is that the assimilative capacity of the lake should be enhanced by forbidding over extraction of water from the lake. It is also suggested that more work should be done to improve the accuracy of the economic valuation.

Joint pollution control in the Lake Tai Basin and the stabilities of the cost allocation schemes.

This paper provides insights into the allocation of benefits derived from joint wastewater treatment in the Lake Tai Basin of China and the acceptability and stability of different cost allocation schemes in a trans-jurisdictional water system context. First, the wastewater treatment cost function is estimated and coalition costs are compared to the cost of stand-alone wastewater treatment in each province. Second, two standard and five game theoretical cost allocation schemes are applied to the grand coalition. Results suggest that a cost savings of US $46.46 million can be obtained by forming a grand coalition. All allocation schemes were found to be acceptable. Results also suggest that both Shanghai and Jiangsu Province would prefer a proportional allocation scheme based on pollutant discharge, because it would offer them the largest cost savings. But this allocation scheme is the least stable one. Based on the criterion of stability, the Nash-Harsanyi scheme emerges as providing the optimal allocation. Finally, calculation of power and stability indexes suggests Jiangsu Province as an agent is critical to the success of grand coalition formation.

Flexible Strategies for Coping with Rainfall Variability: Seasonal Adjustments in Cropped Area in the Ganges Basin.

One of the main manifestations of climate change will be increased rainfall variability. How to deal with this in agriculture will be a major societal challenge. In this paper we explore flexibility in land use, through deliberate seasonal adjustments in cropped area, as a specific strategy for coping with rainfall variability. Such adjustments are not incorporated in hydro-meteorological crop models commonly used for food security analyses. Our paper contributes to the literature by making a comprehensive model assessment of inter-annual variability in crop production, including both variations in crop yield and cropped area. The Ganges basin is used as a case study. First, we assessed the contribution of cropped area variability to overall variability in rice and wheat production by applying hierarchical partitioning on time-series of agricultural statistics. We then introduced cropped area as an endogenous decision variable in a hydro-economic optimization model (WaterWise), coupled to a hydrology-vegetation model (LPJmL), and analyzed to what extent its performance in the estimation of inter-annual variability in crop production improved. From the statistics, we found that in the period 1999-2009 seasonal adjustment in cropped area can explain almost 50% of variability in wheat production and 40% of variability in rice production in the Indian part of the Ganges basin. Our improved model was well capable of mimicking existing variability at different spatial aggregation levels, especially for wheat. The value of flexibility, i.e. the foregone costs of choosing not to crop in years when water is scarce, was quantified at 4% of gross margin of wheat in the Indian part of the Ganges basin and as high as 34% of gross margin of wheat in the drought-prone state of Rajasthan. We argue that flexibility in land use is an important coping strategy to rainfall variability in water stressed regions.