Water Funding May Help Avoid Drought Losses, Analyst Says

The worst U.S. drought in more than five decades shows a global need to improve water management to prevent crop disasters, university researchers and policy experts said.

Governments should encourage investment in irrigation, which is more costly than the improved seeds and fertilizers often advocated to increase food production, Roberto Lenton, a professor of water management and head of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska, said today at the World Food Prize Conference.

“Those farmers who were already using conservation techniques to conserve water, they fared best in the drought,” Lenton said during a panel discussion at the conference in Des Moines, Iowa. “One of the clear lessons is the importance of irrigation.” Farming without tilling, which keeps more water in the soil, drought-resistant crops, and technology that irrigates plants with less water all preserved yields this year, he said.

Competition for increasingly scarce water in the next decade will fuel instability in regions such as South Asia and the Middle East that are important to American national security, according to a U.S. intelligence report released this year. As nations increase water-related projects to gain influence, vulnerable dams, irrigation projects and reservoirs could become targets for terrorists or military strikes, the authors of the report said.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-18/water-funding-may-ease-drought-losses-analyst-says