The global food security situation First, let’s look at the demand for food. Global population will continue to expand at a rate of 1.1 percent until 2015 and more slowly thereafter. Today’s population of 6 000 million will reach 8 100 million by 2030, an increase of about 35 percent. As a result, demand for food will increase over this period but at a slowing rate. The nature of the demand will also change as incomes rise and urbanization continues. The urban population is expected to increase from 43 percent of the world population in 1990 to 61 percent by 2030. As incomes rise, there will be a shift first from maize and tuber crops to rice, or from rice to wheat. At the same time, there will be a shift in preference from cereals to meat and fish, with increasing demand for maize and other coarse grains as animal feed. The growing population and changes in food preferences will result in a strong demand for additional food production, though the types of cereals demanded for food and feed, and the mix of cereals and animal products in the diet, will change. Over the next 30 years overall crop production will thus increase considerably more than that required simply by population growth. Although net food imports into the developing countries will increase, most of the increasing demand in those countries will be met by increased local production. Food insecurity is always associated with poverty: unavailability of jobs for landless labour, inability to access sufficient productive resources, such as land, water and seeds, for farmers. Most often, food insecurity is part of a package with environmental degradation and civil strife or war. The map shows that the nutritional conditions does not always correlate with water scarcity. For example, the most water scarce region of the world: Near East/North Africa, is nutritionally relatively well off and looking forward to a future where it will earn foreign exchange from manufacturing and services while increasingly depending on imports for its food security. Many countries in the humid tropics have a poor nutritional status that can hardly be attributed to lack of water (Indonesia, Vietnam, Central Africa). Where the nutritional map is flashing dark brown, war has devastated the countryside. War takes a terrible toll on rural people. On the other hand, the map also nicely shows the importance of water for food security. Without massive investments in water development and irrigation, countries like India, China, Mexico, or Egypt would show a much darker picture, and perhaps there would be internal conflicts because of hunger.

Since the 1960s, global nutrition has consistently improved, providing more food per capita. Today, enough food can be produced to feed the whole world population, and hunger is produced by human action, or by lack of human action to correct it.. Under nourishment is caused by lack of access to food, not because of lack of available food. The shift from a physical shortage of food to the present situation where enough food can be produced to feed the world population was possible through a combination of high yielding seeds, irrigation, plant nutrition and pest control. In the process, large quantities of water were appropriated for agriculture. The question is now: Will there remain enough water to produce all the food needed to feed the world in the future? The answer to this question is, yes, there is. Global totals and averages mask reality, because water management questions are generally addressed at local level. Data by country already give a better picture, although in large countries the national totals and averages still hide enormous regional differences. This slide represents the human pressure on water resources. It clearly shows that the Near East, North Africa and parts of Asia are subject to water stress,contrary to the comparative abundance of water resources in Latin America, and the low percentage of irrigated agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where a number of countries have not yet had the opportunity and the finances to develop their irrigation potential. .

Water Resources Global and local Giuseppe Alonzo 28 Ottobre 2003 Università degli Studi di Palermo Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Tecnologie Agro-Forestali

Mark Twain 1835-1910 (pseudonym of Samuel Taylor Clemens)

Water for Food and Rural Development

No data < 2.5 2.5–5 5–20 20–35 >35 % undernourished 800 Millions under-nourished people

Increases in world population and economic growth will threaten global water conservation and food security More water required to meet growing demand for food Irrigation is prerequisite for increased food production Water for Food

Water for Rural Development More than 1.3 billion people live under absolute poverty Majority of the poor are living in rural areas Modernization of agriculture with irrigation is a key to poverty alleviation

Agriculture’s use of water % Agricultural withdrawal No data 0-5 5-10 10–20 20–40 >40 Map showing agricultural water withdrawal as percentage of renewable water resource in 1998 by country. Where withdrawals for agriculture are critically high, are indicative of water stress.

Sicily from space

Rain: spring-summer 20-25% autumn-winter 75-80% Land slope: < 5% 28% 5-20% 40% 20-40% 24% > 40% 8% Flat land 3,640 Km2 14.1% Hills 15,780 Km2 61.4% Mountains 6,290 Km2 24.5% Type of the land

Behaviour of rain in Sicily

A drought is the result of a complex interaction among meteorological conditions, land surface and human activities. Precipitation deficits and ensuing conditions of water stress evolve gradually and usually extend over several hundreds of kilometers.

Sicily: input water per year Sicily surface 25000 km2 Mean rain 18 Km3 (700 mm) Evapotranspiration 11.3 Km3 Very rapid run off 4.3 Km3 Available water 2.4 Km3

Available water (Km3) - one year -

Uses of available water (Km3) - one year -

Sicilian population: 5.000.000 Water per person, per year: 480 L Following the World Healt Organization, 1000 m3/year are required per person to fulfill all the necessities including Industrial and Agricultural requirements; at least 1.8 m3/year (50 L/day) of the above water should be for personal use only.

QUESTIONS ? “The most important thing is to never stop questioning.” - Albert Einstein Thanks