Every day, nearly a billion people in the world are food-insecure, without enough safe and nutritious food to lead healthy and active lives. Many of them are also water-insecure, without reliable access to an adequate amount of clean water to meet their needs. This situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
By 2050, our global food demand will double to meet the needs of nearly 10 billion people. To ensure sustainable food and water security in the face of population and income increases, a changing climate, and the growing demand for scarce water resources, it is imperative to improve water management in agricultural and food systems.
The Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) was founded to leverage the expertise of Nebraska and the University of Nebraska and extend it with strong state, national and international partnerships. DWFI also collaborates with other universities, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and government agencies around the world to address issues on a global scale.
DWFI Leads Smallholder Sustainable Irrigation Entrepreneurship Project in Sub-Saharan Africa
When it comes to food and water security, in addition to building large centrally managed irrigation infrastructure projects, it’s important to help smallholder farmers make decisions on personal investments in irrigation, including the design, purchase, and installation of irrigation systems....
New Agricultural Water Economics Team Advances Water Policy
Increasingly frequent drought events pose a high risk to agricultural producers in the U.S. and other farming areas around the world. The need for a better understanding of how to manage water resources to help mitigate drought and other impacts of climate change has spawned a new era of water policy....
Small Rwandan Agribusiness Entrepreneurs Work in New Ways Following COVID-19 Restrictions
In 2020, UNL and DWFI researchers received support to collaborate with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on a multi-country agricultural entrepreneurship project in sub-Saharan Africa. But COVID-19 had locked down the world, including travel, so team members that were recruited for the IFAD project began by working to understand how small agribusiness entrepreneurs were affected by the pandemic.
Future Farming: Integrated Water Management Leads to Profitability and Sustainability
As technology advances, it has become increasingly clear how agricultural water management tools developed by Nebraska researchers and others around the world can help create powerful synergistic systems to support producers....
Modeling Brazilian Aquifer Will Help Farmers Maximize Crop Water Productivity
A lot needs to happen to understand exactly how a region can meet water needs more efficiently. And the research process can be complex....
DWFI Experts Contribute to FAO's State of Food and Agriculture 2020
Intensifying water constraints threaten food security and nutrition and action is needed to make water use in agriculture more sustainable and equitable. Irrigated agriculture remains by far the largest user of freshwater, but scarcity of freshwater is a growing problem owing to increasing demand and competition for freshwater resources....