Breaking the dry-spell: integrating water and soil management for better yields and resilience

Ensuring that we make the best use of our water to produce enough food for a growing global demand is one of the major challenges of our time. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in the drylands, areas that are already struggling to squeeze every drop of productivity out of their limited water resource.

FAO’s 2018 report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World is showing a creeping increase in both the number of people affected by hunger and the number affected by drought. As population growth is projected to lead to a 20% increase in water demand for agriculture by 2050, the importance of effectively managing the resource, especially in places that are water-scarce, is an essential part of creating resilience to climatic changes and ensuring food and nutritional security.

Last week, researchers from all over the world came together to discuss this important issue at the Global Water Security Conference for Agriculture and Natural Resources in Hyderabad, where WLE researchers from the…