Global water outlook to 2025

"... Based on a global model of supply and demand for food and water, this report shows that if current water policies continue, farmers will indeed find it difficult to meet the world's food needs. Hardest hit will be the world's poorest people. The results from the model used in this report also show the consequences of changing the course of water policy. Further inattention to water-related investments and policies will produce a severe water crisis, which will lead in turn to a food crisis. A commitment to sustainable use of water, through appropriate policies and investments, however, will lead to a more water- and food-secure world. Water may be a scarce resource, but humans have developed many ways of using it more efficiently — that is, getting more from each unit of water. But water-saving policies, practices, and technologies are of no help if they are not used. Inappropriate incentives and institutions often hinder effective use of water. This report spells out the future results of our current choices." Authors' Introduction

Water and food to 2025

The world's farmers will likely need to produce enough food to feed 8 billion people by 2025, and to do so they must have enough water to raise their crops. Yet farmers are already competing with industry, domestic water users, and the environment for access to the world's finite supply of water. Will available freshwater meet the rapidly growing demands for household, industrial, and environmental needs and still provide enough water to produce food for a burgeoning population? New research from IFPRI shows what steps policymakers and water users can take now to help ensure that water scarcity will not result in worsening hunger for the world's poorest people.

The role of rainfed agriculture in the future of global food production:

This paper examines future prospects for rainfed cereal production, and its importance in the evolving global food system. First, the paper undertakes a critical synthesis of the literature to assess three primary ways to enhance rainfed cereal yields: increasing effective rainfall use through improved water management, particularly water harvesting; increasing crop yields in rainfed areas through agricultural research; and reforming policies and increasing investments in rainfed areas. Second, the IMPACT-WATER integrated water-food modeling framework is applied to assess the current situation and plausible future options of irrigation water supply and food security, primarily on a global scale. This model simulates the relationships among water availability and demand, food supply and demand, international food prices, and trade at regional and global levels. The results show that rainfed agriculture will maintain an important role in the growth of food production in the future, although appropriate investments and policy reforms will be required to enhance the contribution of rainfed agriculture.Agricultural policy., Rainfed farming Developing countries., Cereal crops. Agricultural policy., Rainfed farming Developing countries., Cereal crops., Food security., Water-supply., Food supply., Trade., Crop yields., Water use Management.,

Central Administration of Agouti-Related Peptide Increases Food Intake in Japanese Quail

Agouti-related peptide is a 132-amino acid peptide associated with stimulating food intake in birds and mammals. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of AgRP in 7-day old Japanese quail. In Experiment 1, we tested 0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 nmol AgRP and found no effect on food intake or water intake over a 3 hour duration. In Experiment 2, we tested we tested 0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 nmol AgRP and found no effect on food or water intake over a 24 hour duration. In Experiment 3, we tested 0.0625 and 0.125 nmol AgRP and found no effect on food intake over a 24 hour duration, but found an increase in water intake 900 minutes following injection. In Experiment 4, we tested 1.5 and 3.0 nmol AgRP and found an increase in food and water intake 900 minutes following injection in quail which received 1.5, but not 3.0, nmol AgRP. In Experiment 5, we found that AgRP had no effect on behaviors other than food intake. These results suggest that AgRP has a stimulatory effect on food intake in Japanese quail

Facing alternative futures: prospects for and paths to food security in Africa

"Food security in Africa has substantially worsened since 1970. Although the proportion of malnourished individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa has remained in the range of 33–35 percent since around 1970, the absolute number of malnourished people in Africa has increased substantially with population growth, from around 88 million in 1970 to an estimate of over 200 million in 1999–2001. Yet this discouraging trend need not be a blueprint for the future. New research from IFPRI shows that the policy and investment choices of African policymakers and the international development community can make an enormous difference for Africa's future agricultural production and food security. By modeling the results of a number of different policy scenarios in Africa through the year 2025, we show that the number of malnourished children, one important indicator of food security, could rise as high as 41.9 million or fall as low as 9.4 million. These scenarios, therefore, shed light on the effectiveness of various policies and investments in assuring a food-secure future for Africa.' from TextFood insecurity, Forecasting, Agricultural productivity, Human capital, Malnutrition in children, Impact model,

Looking ahead: long-term prospects for Africa's agricultural development and food security

"Sub-Saharan Africa is the only developing region in the world where food insecurity has worsened instead of improved in recent decades. In this discussion paper, Mark W. Rosegrant, Sarah A. Cline, Weibo Li, Timothy B. Sulser, and Rowena A. Valmonte-Santos show that this discouraging trend need not be a blueprint for the future. The research contained in this discussion paper was conducted in preparation for the IFPRI 2020 Africa conference “Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020: Prioritizing Actions, Strengthening Actors, and Facilitating Partnerships,” held in Kampala, Uganda, April 1–3, 2004. The authors examine the implications of several different policy scenarios based on IFPRI's International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT). This model, developed at IFPRI in the early 1990s, has been continually updated to incorporate more food sectors and geographic regions. In this paper, the authors use IMPACT to assess the consequences of a wide range of policy and investment choices for Africa, including a business as usual scenario (continuation of current policy and investment trends through 2025), a pessimistic scenario (declining trends in key investments and in agricultural productivity), and a vision scenario (improving trends in investments and hence in agricultural productivity and human capital), as well as scenarios for more effective use of rainfall in agriculture, reduced marketing margins, and three different scenarios for trade liberalization. The wide variation in results reveals how much these choices will matter. For example, the number of malnourished children under five years old in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2025 is projected to be 38.3 million under business as usual, 55.1 million under the pessimistic scenario, and 9.4 million under the vision scenario. It is our hope that this research will clarify the steps needed to help stimulate the actions contributing to approaching the vision scenario. " From Foreword by Joachim von BraunImpact model, Food insecurity, Forecasting, Agricultural productivity, Human capital, Malnutrition in children,

Weakly First Order Cosmological Phase Transitions and Fermion Production

We study weakly first order cosmological phase transitions in finite temperature field theories. Focusing on the standard electroweak theory and its minimal supersymmetric extension, we identify the regimes of Higgs masses for which the phase transition in these models proceeds by significant phase mixing and the coarsening of the subsequent domain network. This dynamics is distinct from that for strongly first order transitions, which proceed by the nucleation and propagation of critical bubbles. We describe how electroweak baryogenesis might take place in these models, explaining how our new picture can relax the sphaleron washout bound of traditional scenarios.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX. Some extra clarifying discussion added. To appear in Phys. Lett.

Water. Global Water Outlook to 2025: Averting an Impending Crisis

IFPRI and IWMI\u27s report uses computer modeling to project water demand and availability through to 2025 and predicts the likely impact of changes in water policy and investment, making specific recommendations for specific locations around the globe. The report argues that if current water policies continue, farmers will find it difficult to meet the world’s food needs. Hardest hit will be the world’s poorest people. The authors call for: International commitment to sustainable use of water, through appropriate policies and investments; Wider application of existing water saving technologies; The removal of inappropriate incentives and reform of institutions which hinder effective use of water

New risks and opportunities for food security: scenario analyses for 2015 and 2050

"Given the number of undernourished people in the developing world and the increasingly complex risks to food security, policymakers are faced with an enormous agenda. Freeing people from hunger will require more and better-targeted investments, innovations, and policy actions, driven by a keen understanding of the dynamic risks and forces that shape the factors affecting people's access to food and the links with nutrition. The International Food Policy Research Institute's (IFPRI's) International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) provides insight into the management of these risks through appropriate policy actions. By projecting future global food scenarios to 2050, IMPACT explores the potential implications of policy action and inaction in several main risk areas as well as the effects on child malnutrition in the developing world, commodity prices, demand, cereal yields, production, and net trade. In the progressive policy actions scenario, which assumes increased investment in rural development, health, education, and agricultural research and development, developing country governments and the international community are able to dramatically reduce the number of food-insecure people, leading to a worldwide decline in hunger. Under these conditions, Latin America and China are able to virtually eliminate child malnutrition by 2050. Bolstered by the development and dissemination of improved technologies and better infrastructure, crop production and yields increase in developing countries. Notably, the bulk of the growth in production is driven by yield increases rather than by expanding land area. Spurred by growth in the agricultural sector, average incomes in developing countries increase. Rising incomes bolster demand for high-value agricultural products, such as meat, dairy, and fruits and vegetables; global livestock production more than doubles, for example. Average per capita calorie supplies for developing countries exceed 3,400 per day, well in excess of minimum requirements. The policy failure scenario assumes greater political discord and more extensive agricultural protectionism, together with the failure of policies to deal with food emergencies related to conflict. Slow growth and trade restrictions lead to stagnation in average per capita calorie availability, which remains only slightly above minimum requirements until after 2030, when availability increases. In addition, crucial investments in agriculture, rural development, and poverty reduction are forgone or displaced. Because of limited investment in agricultural research and technology, this scenario has a high level of crop area expansion as a result of relatively rapid population growth and slim yield improvements in developing countries. This scenario also results in flat maize prices, declining per capita cereal demand, falling beef prices, and relatively flat meat demand. As a result of the policies in this scenario, the number of malnourished children in developing countries rises between 1997 and 2015, after which there are only modest declines. In the technology and natural resource management failure scenario, yield growth falls even more than under the preceding scenario, forcing farmers to move into marginal producing areas, which causes a more rapid expansion of cereal area into less productive land that does not compensate for the yield shortfalls (and causes environmental degradation). As a result, cereal prices rise substantially through 2030 and then fall off only gradually. Beef and other meat prices, which are affected by the price of feed, follow a similar pattern. Developing-country per capita calorie availability is essentially unchanged over 1997–2050 and remains at a barely adequate average level. Given unequal access to the food that is available, millions of people actually consume less than the minimum. The occurrence of child undernourishment is even higher than under the policy failure scenario in all developing-country regions. Overall, the technology and natural resource management failure scenario results in the worst impact on food security and child malnourishment in the developing world. The progressive policy scenario outlines several of the most crucial positive steps. National governments and the international community must assume a new focus on agricultural growth and rural development, along with increasing their investments in education, social services, and health. Policies to encourage synergistic growth in the nonfarm sectors are also needed to spur broad-based economic growth. Underpinning these strategies and research agendas must be a firm commitment to reducing hunger and improving the welfare of the world's undernourished people." From Authors' Executive SummaryImpact model, Caloric intake, Safety nets,