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Increased food production and reduced water use through optimized crop distribution

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 919–924 (2017)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 09 November 2017

This article has been updated

Abstract

Growing demand for agricultural commodities for food, fuel and other uses is expected to be met through an intensification of production on lands that are currently under cultivation. Intensification typically entails investments in modern technology — such as irrigation or fertilizers — and increases in cropping frequency in regions suitable for multiple growing seasons. Here we combine a process-based crop water model with maps of spatially interpolated yields for 14 major food crops to identify potential differences in food production and water use between current and optimized crop distributions. We find that the current distribution of crops around the world neither attains maximum production nor minimum water use. We identify possible alternative configurations of the agricultural landscape that, by reshaping the global distribution of crops within current rainfed and irrigated croplands based on total water consumption, would feed an additional 825 million people while reducing the consumptive use of rainwater and irrigation water by 14% and 12%, respectively. Such an optimization process does not entail a loss of crop diversity, cropland expansion or impacts on nutrient and feed availability. It also does not necessarily invoke massive investments in modern technology that in many regions would require a switch from smallholder farming to large-scale commercial agriculture with important impacts on rural livelihoods.

Human demand for crop production is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades as a result of population growth, richer diets and biofuel use. For food production to keep pace, unprecedented amounts of resources — such as water, fertilizers and energy — will be required. With humankind already exceeding ‘sustainable’ levels in numerous ways1,2,3, calls for ‘sustainable intensification’ — in which yields are enhanced on existing croplands while seeking to minimize impacts on water and other agricultural resources — have increased in frequency and urgency. Recent studies have quantified aspects of this, showing that there is a large potential to improve crop yields4 and increase harvest frequencies5 to better meet future human demand6. Although promising, such solutions would necessitate major investments in modern technology and large additional inputs of water and fertilizer7. Similarly, recent work has shown that increases in the efficiency of resource use within the food system will not be able to keep pace with growing human demand8,9. Thus, unless society can find new solutions aimed at achieving sustainable agriculture, the environmental burden of food production will necessarily continue to increase.

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Fig. 1: Potential annual water savings from redistributing major crops across currently cultivated lands.
Fig. 2: Global crop-specific changes in consumptive water use, nutrient production and feed supply due to redistributing crops in currently cultivated lands.
Fig. 3: Spatial distribution of increases in calorie and protein production from crop redistribution.
Fig. 4: Ratio of total crop water demand to renewable water availability.

Change history

  • 09 November 2017

    Owing to a technical error, this Article was published a day later than stated. The correct date of publication is 7 November 2017; all versions of the Article have now been corrected accordingly.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. R. Smith for providing information on crop nutrient content. We thank J. Gephart for her useful input regarding optimization approach. This work was supported by The Nature Conservancy’s NatureNet Science Fellows programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Kyle Frankel Davis & Paolo D’Odorico

  2. The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kyle Frankel Davis

  3. The Nature Conservancy, New York, NY, USA

    Kyle Frankel Davis

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Maria Cristina Rulli & Antonio Seveso

  5. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Paolo D’Odorico

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  1. Kyle Frankel Davis
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  4. Paolo D’Odorico
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Contributions

K.F.D., A.S., M.C.R. and P.D. designed the experiment. K.F.D. and A.S. performed the analysis. K.F.D., M.C.R. and P.D. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Kyle Frankel Davis.

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A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-017-0021-4.

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Davis, K.F., Rulli, M.C., Seveso, A. et al. Increased food production and reduced water use through optimized crop distribution. Nature Geosci 10, 919–924 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-017-0004-5

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