GROWING A WATER AND FOOD SECURE FUTURE: ANNUAL REPORT FY2019 (JULY 1, 2018 TO JUNE 30, 2019)

Ensuring water and food security for our growing world is an audacious goal – exactly what Bob Daugherty sought to achieve by creating the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) at the University of Nebraska nearly 10 years ago. He, along with leaders and supporters within the University of Nebraska, the state and well beyond, understood that a collective and committed effort on wise water management was essential to producing enough food to feed the world while sustaining our valuable and limited water resources. For decades, many dedicated people around the world have striven to overcome the challenges of ensuring water and food security. There isn’t a “silver bullet” that will quickly address the complex, interconnected and evolving issues, including climate change, rising demand for more water-intensive foods, soil and water degradation, conflict over and competition for water resources, and, in many developing countries, the low levels of investment in supporting facilities and services. In collaboration with our dedicated partners, DWFI is making valuable contributions to meeting these challenges. As you’ll read in this year’s annual report, the institute is conducting innovative research, informing policy, convening stakeholders, sharing knowledge, cultivating new leaders and communicating our work to millions of stakeholders across the U.S. and around the world. Most importantly, our work is advancing our mission to ensure food and water security for nearly 10 billion people by 2050. The progress towards these outcomes was fittingly demonstrated at the 2019 Water for Food Global Conference, which focused on innovation in water and food security. More than 400 partners – including farmers, scientists, companies, philanthropists, investors, government agencies and nonprofit organizations – convened to explore practical actions to help stakeholders build more resilient, water-smart and productive agricultural and food systems. New partnerships and ideas generated during the conference sessions and networking are now under development. Here in Nebraska and neighboring states, it has been a year of far too much water, dominated by historic floods and a wetter-than-usual planting season that left many acres fallow. The impacts on people and communities, infrastructure, and crops and livestock have been enormous. Much has been done to restore the affected communities, though full recovery will take much longer. Stakeholders across the state are reflecting on lessons learned and exploring ways to strengthen the resilience of communities, including bolstering water and food systems. The results from the recently completed Nebraska Water Productivity report reflect remarkable improvements in yield per drop of water used (water productivity or WP) for crops, livestock and biofuels over the past three decades. This underscores the importance of long-term investments in crop and livestock breeding, enhanced management systems and new technologies. The challenge is how to sustainably achieve similar water productivity advancements in other agricultural landscapes. With our friends at the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources (IANR) and a number of Faculty Fellows and partners, we have catalyzed our efforts to better understand and address water quality challenges here in Nebraska and further afield. A notable example is the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA) in Northeast Nebraska, where we are working with four Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) to mitigate and manage nitrate contamination. DWFI is part of a strong alliance of international partners working to expand development of local solutions for irrigated agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and other emerging regions of the world. These collaborations amplify our individual strengths and create powerful new approaches to achieving water and food security. Directly contributing to this ambitious initiative, the institute and IANR are assessing existing irrigated agriculture business models in Rwanda. The results from this research are expected to inform new investments in sustainably scaling intensive agriculture in other sub-Saharan countries. While it will still take time to fully achieve our vision of a world without hunger or water scarcity, we are witnessing accelerated progress. As we close in on the institute’s 10th anniversary in 2020, we are pleased to share the impacts we’ve made. We greatly appreciate the support of our Board of Directors, staff, University of Nebraska leadership, Faculty Fellows, Global Fellows, International Advisory Panel, donors and friends who help make these important breakthroughs possible

Working to Ensure a Water and Food Secure World Annual Report FY2016 (July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016)

From rural Nebraska to rural Tanzania, the Water for Food Global Institute is working to achieve greater food security with less pressure on the planet’s scarce water resources, fueling change through conversations, collaborations and on-the-ground impacts. Leveraging Leadership, Partnerships and Resources for Global Impact The Water for Food Global Institute is a vehicle for collaboration, operating through a network of constituent parts that leverages the leadership, resources and rich history of experience and expertise at the University of Nebraska. In addition to our core group of staff, governed by a board of directors and with guidance from internal and external advisory bodies, WFI draws on its Faculty Fellows, a group of 84 faculty members from across all four campuses and disciplines of the University of Nebraska; Global Fellows, a group of 18 affiliated faculty and researchers external to the University of Nebraska whose geographic locations strengthen the institute’s global influence; and our growing roster of postdoctoral researchers, students and interns. Within Nebraska, WFI carries out its programs with the strong support of the Nebraska Water Center and its Water Sciences Laboratory, which became part of WFI in 2012. Mandated by the U.S. Congress in 1964 as one of 54 national water centers, NWC is a vital resource in advancing WFI’s public health and ecosystems research. Rooted in Nebraska, one of the world’s best natural laboratories for irrigation, groundwater and freshwater ecosystems, but with a network of talented partners throughout the globe, WFI makes the most of its resources to help advance water and food security around the world. Turning Research into Results WFI has a presence now in some of the most water and food compromised regions of the world, thanks to cutting-edge satellite-based technology used by University of Nebraska researchers to create agricultural and water monitoring tools. In partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, we are working to close water and agricultural productivity gaps through the development of a global public database that will help farmers improve yields, and at the same time help monitor drought and drive an early warning system. We are pursuing similar goals in India with the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, one of the largest and most influential agricultural organizations in the world. (Read more on page 17.) We are advancing our understanding of Nebraska’s groundwater through participation in an important study addressing the agricultural sustainability of the High Plains Aquifer through a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, we are improving groundwater management for agricultural production by developing the inaugural Nebraska Water Productivity Report and sharing the local lessons of the state’s Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) in the form of recorded interviews that can be accessed anywhere in the world. (Read more on page 24.) With the international aid organization World Vision International and Valmont Industries, we are working to enhance high productivity agriculture in a center pivot project in Tanzania that has the potential to transform the lives of smallholder farmers, while helping the country feed its people for generations. Our collaboration in India with Jain Irrigation Systems will help us develop salt and drought resistant crop varieties, advance the education of Jain scientists and expand the use of geospatial technology to improve irrigation water management. Farm fields are not separate from the ecosystems in which they exist or the people around them. As such, we are working in a number of ways to study and protect freshwater and agricultural ecosystems and public health - from chronicling the movement of water in the Platte River Basin to mapping watershed effects on chronic disease. In this area, we are working closely with the Nebraska Water Center, and the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center on projects within Nebraska and the Midwest to countries in Africa and the Middle East. Fueling Change Through Conversations Conversations are at the heart of the work we do. If the world’s water and food production specialists operated in isolation, we might never reach our mutual goal of global food security without detrimentally impacting the life-giving water resources we all depend on. Whether informal or instructional, WFI works to engage its wide range of stakeholders in meaningful discussions that lead to changes in knowledge and behavior. The 2016 Water for Food Global Conference served as a catalyst for international collaboration. Throughout the three-day conference, conversations among WFI leaders, partners and participants fostered ideas to advance water and food security in the coming years and decades. The theme of this year’s conference was quite fitting in this regard: “Catalytic Collaborations: Building Public-Private Partnerships for Water and Food Security.” (Read more on page 37.) In May, WFI hosted its second annual research forum featuring presentations by graduate and undergraduate students. The students shared the results of their water and food security-related research projects with NU faculty, staff, students and the broader community. Communications took place in person, in print and online. WFI staff and Faculty Fellows co-authored reports, articles and blogs. Our social media audience grew substantially this year, with many stakeholders commenting on WFI posts, photos and videos. Our conference room hosted visiting delegates from Argentina, China, India, the Czech Republic, Brazil and many other countries. And, our leadership team led more than 50 presentations, workshops and meetings with partners at conferences and research projects throughout the country and in key international locations. Through these events and communications, WFI reaches out to the world to find partners and support education to initiate real change

LOCAL TO GLOBAL: DEVELOPING SOLUTIONS AND CREATING IMPACTS. Annual Report FY 2017

FOREWORD - Hank M. Bounds, President, University of Nebraska PREFACE - Peter G. McCornick, Executive Director Focus Areas: Where we are headed We are committed to helping the world efficiently use its limited freshwater resources to ensure food security for current and future generations. The diversity of projects and activities in this report reflects the complexity of the challenges we face in achieving this goal through technical and policy research, education and communication. Our research and policy development efforts are focused within five areas to maximize the expertise of DWFI staff, our colleagues at the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and leadership of the University of Nebraska: Closing water and agricultural productivity gaps Improving groundwater management for agricultural production Enhancing high productivity agriculture Supporting freshwater and agricultural ecosystems and public health Managing agricultural drought, focusing on drought monitoring and mitigation across all other research areas Within these important areas, we have outlined a clear set of outcomes to achieve by 2020, which involve creating changes in behavior, knowledge or condition that advance our mission. These intended outcomes have guided our activities and projects over the last year, and have focused primarily on important food-producing regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, India, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the United States. To help close water and agricultural productivity gaps, we are working to develop satellite-based decision support tools based on evapotranspiration estimates in key areas of potential agricultural improvement, such as the MENA region and the Dominican Republic. We are collaborating with farmers, water managers and private sector suppliers to adopt technology and best practices that will improve water productivity in key agricultural areas in Nebraska and participating countries. The institute is a leading voice for improving groundwater management in agricultural production. Within this focus area, we are working to identify and communicate costeffective groundwater management policies, considering factors such as local context, climate conditions and constraints in the U.S. and selected countries. Our team is also promoting effective groundwater governance and policy through education and pilot programs that demonstrate best management practices and highlight innovative technology and exemplary institutions. Additionally, we are developing new methods to monitor improvements in groundwater conditions in selected areas that are degraded in terms of quality, streamflow or depletion