The institute’s communications and convening activities play a key role in developing its brand reputation and industry authority; ensuring brand awareness and recognition; and ultimately, contributing to changes in knowledge, action or condition. The DWFI communications team is integrated with research and policy work throughout project life cycles, helping the institute facilitate its research, policy, education and development goals through strategic and integrated multichannel communication. Additionally, the communications team plays a key role in event management and development activities for the institute, including coordinating the Water for Food Global Conference. DWFI’s communication and convening activities allow the institute to engage with new partners and provide enhanced support to existing partners.
DWFI Assistant Research Professor Ivo Zution Goncalves shares his research during a session at the 2025 Water for Food Global Conference. Credit: DWFI.
The 2025 Water for Food Global Conference, hosted by DWFI, brought together more than 350 attendees from 23 countries to Lincoln, Nebraska to address global water and food security challenges. The week-long event featured more than 100 expert speakers who shared innovative solutions and research on topics such as improving water use efficiency in agriculture, sustainable farming practices, smallholder irrigation, drought and human health, and policy frameworks. The conference emphasized the critical need for collaboration across academia, government, policy, and industry to develop effective strategies for ensuring a resilient and food-secure future while preserving vital water resources.
The conference featured speakers from global partnering organizations and companies including the Nature Conservancy, the International Water Management Institute, Catholic Relief Services, Valmont Industries, Bayer CropScience, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute, LI-COR, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Scoular, the National Drought Mitigation Center, the African Union Commission, and others.
The conference also showcased Nebraska outside of the conference room to the global audience by hosting field tours of local farms, Nebraska Natural Resources Districts, and research facilities, with the help of Nebraska commodity boards. The tours were an opportunity to share Nebraska’s unique water management system and agricultural ecosystems.
Videos of all conference sessions are available on DWFI’s YouTube channel. Photos from the event can be viewed on DWFI’s Flickr page. All conference materials are archived on our conference website.
The Water for Food Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and Pandora. Credit: DWFI.
The Water for Food Podcast amplifies the voices of those making waves in the water and food space. Since its inception in August 2020, 43 episodes of the podcast have been released, which have attracted listeners from more than 85 countries. New episodes are released each month and the platform allows DWFI to engage in meaningful, casual conversation with its partners and share these experiences with its stakeholders. Podcast episodes released in FY2025 had more than 1,500 unique downloads in total:
Episode 37: Opportunities of Irrigation and Mechanization with Jude Cobbing, DWFI Senior Program Manager
Episode 38: Irrigation expansion’s varying impacts on nutrition with Kyle Davis and Piyush Mehta of the Department of Geography & Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware
Episode 39: Impacts on water stress and agricultural production in Nebraska with DWFI Research Assistant Professor Ivo Gonçalves and DWFI Senior Program Manager Renata Rimšaitė
Episode 40: Irrigation's role in agricultural productivity with Darren Siekman, vice president of policy and industry strategy at Valley Agriculture, a Valmont Company
Episode 41: Nebraska’s new nitrogen recommendations on irrigated corn with University of Nebraska–Lincoln Professor of Agronomy Richard Ferguson
Episode 42: Special Episode - The 15th Anniversary of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute
Episode 43: Irrigation and Global Health with Claudia Ringler
Coverage of DWFI research, announcements and events in various external media outlets over the past year earned the institute a reach of more than 1.77 billion views (a 177% increase over FY2024) through 541 media mentions.
DWFI’s social media accounts engage audiences with the institute’s latest research, articles, and updates. With a research-interested audience, DWFI has focused audience growth on LinkedIn and Youtube, which has seen 26% and 52% growth in followers in FY 2025, respectively. At the end of FY 2025, DWFI had 23,938 followers across all social media channels.
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