Securing Water for Agriculture : A Guide to Investment Decisions
How can the world grow more food, increase incomes, reduce poverty, and protect the environment with growing numbers of mouths to feed and increasingly constrained resources? A big part of the answer lies in better management of agricultural water....
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English |
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Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2009/04/10388110/securing-water-agriculture-guide-investment-decisions http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11725 |
| Summary: | How can the world grow more food,
increase incomes, reduce poverty, and protect the
environment with growing numbers of mouths to feed and
increasingly constrained resources? A big part of the answer
lies in better management of agricultural water.
Agricultural water management (AWM) encompasses irrigation
on both a large and small scale, drainage of irrigated and
rain fed areas, watershed restoration, recycling of water,
rainwater harvesting, and better in-field water management
practices. There is considerable scope for improving returns
on water from agricultural use. The key economic challenge
is to set up an incentive framework that encourages
efficient water use and profitable high value agriculture.
Evidence indicates that such a framework improves efficiency
and accountability, raises productivity, and promotes
sustainable and environmentally responsible resource use. At
the same time, irrigation schemes pose a financial
challenge: to recover costs at a rate sufficient to finance
services to farmers. The broad challenge is to encourage
both large- and small-scale private investment. |
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