1

Agriculture, Population, Land and Water Scarcity in a changing World –

The Role of Irrigation
Timm Sauer 1,2, Petr Havlík 3, Uwe A. Schneider 1,3, Georg Kindermann 3 and Michael Obersteiner 3
1
Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, Germany
2
International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling, Germany
3
Forestry Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

Abstract– Fertile land and fresh water constitute two of cropland may decline because of soil degradation and
the most fundamental resources for food production. expansion of other sectors on fertile agricultural
These resources are affected by environmental, political, land[6,7]. Third, environmental and human health
economic, and technical developments. Regional impacts regulations may constrain agricultural management
may transmit to the world through increased trade.
and put limits to intensification[8-10]. Fourth, continued
With a global forest and agricultural sector model, we
quantify the impacts of increased demand for food due
growth in domestic and industrial sector water
to population growth and economic development on consumption will decrease the available water volume
potential land and water use. In particular, we for agriculture[11,12]. Fifth, if climate change
investigate producer adaptation regarding crop and intensifies, the productivity of agricultural systems
irrigation choice, agricultural market adjustments, and will be impacted. However, these impacts will differ
changes in the values of land and water. across locations and involve both improvements and
deteriorations[7,13,14]. While the above mentioned
Keywords– Irrigation, Food supply, Integrated challenges may differ locally, their net impact is likely
assessment, Water use intensity, Agricultural to affect all countries as agricultural commodities are
adaptation, Land scarcity, Partial equilibrium model
heavily traded.
The global dimension of agricultural water use is
evident from the fact that agriculture accounts for
I. INTRODUCTION more than 70% of anthropogenic water withdrawals.
Furthermore, about 20% of total arable cropland is
Global population is projected to grow by about under irrigation, producing 40% of the global
65% within the next 50 years. At the same time, harvest[15]. With continuing population growth and
average per capita income is also expected to rise[1]. limited potential to increase suitable cropland,
Together, these two developments imply a substantial irrigation becomes an increasingly important tool to
increase in demand for water and food – not only ensure sufficient global supply of food in the future[16].
because of more people, but also because of trends However, increasing levels of irrigation will increase
towards more water-intense lifestyles and diets. Water the cost of water and, in some regions, this may cause
resources are an important economic driver because severe problems of water scarcity.
they constrain food production, energy generation, and As water scarcity increases, inefficient allocation of
activities in other economic sectors. The complex water causes increasing costs to society. Missing
interdependencies between water resources and food property rights and inadequate water pricing are major
production have been referred to in recent studies as causes of such inefficiencies. The magnitude of
an evolving global food crisis[2,3]. water-related externalities may further increase as
The future supply of food and water faces several international agreements to mitigate global change put
challenges. First, technical progress in agriculture may more restrictions on agriculture or land use in general.
be subject to decreasing rates because of biophysical Preventing these externalities from growing out of
limits[4,5]. Second, future land expansion may be proportion is therefore in societies’ best interest.
restricted because of physical limits and conflicting However, national and international policymakers
demands. Furthermore, the productivity of existing need scientific guidance to adequately regulate

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agricultural water use. In particular, appropriate II. MATERIALS AND METHODS

assessments of agricultural water use need to consider
a) the heterogeneity of natural and farming conditions, Our paper is structured as follows. We briefly
b) international commodity markets especially for portray the model and basic components of the
agricultural products, c) agricultural and land use irrigation module, followed by a more detailed
related environmental policies, and d) synergies and description of the determinants of irrigation choice
tradeoffs between different land use related (crop profitability, resource endowments, water
externalities[17,18] demand, energy demand, labour demand). For each of
Many existing studies, which endogenously these elements we describe the methods used to derive
consider the adoption of irrigation practises, stay at parameter values, and the assumptions made on how
farm or basin scales. A few global assessments of the depicted elements are constituted and interlinked.
irrigation distribution and impacts exist but mainly Then we describe the computation of total irrigation
within disciplinary boundaries, i.e. physical geography costs, depending on the particular biophysical and
or economics. These studies, however, do not account economic environment.
for site-specific differences between alternative In the next sections we introduce the baseline
irrigation systems and usually reduce and simplify scenarios and discuss first model results.
decisions to a choice between rainfed and irrigated
agriculture. Global integrated land use models A. Global Forest and Agricultural Sector Model
accounting for multi-sectoral competition and
limitations of land and water resources are rare[19]. We apply a mathematical programming-based,
In this study we analyse quantitatively how price-endogenous sector model of the agricultural and
irrigation decisions in land use systems respond to forestry sectors. The model depicts production,
different development scenarios. Possible irrigation consumption, and international trade in 11 world
options include four major systems in addition to regions. The agricultural sector is represented by more
rainfed agriculture. The suitability of these systems than 40 crops and an aggregated livestock sector. For
depends on environmental, technological, and crop management, the model can choose between
economic factors, which influence crop suitability, different irrigation systems as described in detail in the
water use efficiency, energy demand, labour intensity, following sections. Livestock production and
and overall cost of irrigated agriculture, and thus affect consumption is represented by an aggregate of animal
motivation-based decision making that aims at calories and is connected to crop production through
individual or societal welfare maximisation[20]. fixed feed ratios. Except for the irrigation-related
We present a first attempt to integrate crop and parameters the agricultural part of the model relies on
location-specific irrigation methods into a global FAO statistics accessible at http://faostat.fao.org.
partial equilibrium model of land use. This model Forestry sector focuses on biomass production for
estimates economically motivated decision making sawnwood and wood pulp and represents also the first
subject to site-specific environmental constraints, and transformation level. It is an adapted version of the
heterogeneous, system-specific costs[21]. The model 4DSM model[22]. The model contains also several
optimises explicitly water and energy use efficiency. bioenergy processing technologies and a complete
This model can be used to assess the impacts of greenhouse gas accounting, but those are not the focus
political, technical, environmental, and market of the present analysis.
developments on agricultural management decisions The model simulates the market and trade
and their aggregated impacts on scarcity of land and equilibrium in global agricultural markets. The market
water, agricultural commodity supply and prices, and equilibrium reveals commodity and factor prices,
impacts on environmental externalities including levels of domestic production, export and import
deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, quantities, resource usage, and environmental impacts.
and nutrient leaching.

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B. Irrigation Module operating times per event[28]. The schedules assume

uniform application depths during complete vegetation
Four irrigation methods are portrayed: surface period. Guide values on soil infiltration rate, suitable
irrigation systems including basin and furrow slope, the allowable range of flow rate by soil type at
irrigation, localised drip irrigation, and sprinkler optimal slope, and corresponding size of irrigated area
irrigation (represented by center-pivot sprinklers). were taken from literature[29]. In a first step we
Current cost trends of water delivery infrastructures calculated maximum number of events with respect to
made us assume ‘piped water supply’ for all of the length of growing period[30] and common application
systems[23]. For each method we evaluate biophysical frequencies[20,29]. Using total irrigation water demand,
and technical compatibility to exclude inappropriate we accordingly determined application depth per event
irrigation decisions. by country, crop, and method. Second, we calculated
The choice of crop and management type is maximum application depth by soil type on optimal
motivated by profit maximisation subject to resource slope with respect to flow rate and soil infiltration rate.
constraints. Profitability is defined as revenue less To account for slope effects on surface irrigation
production costs. Crop revenue is calculated as the performance we modified the application depths for
expected yield per spatial unit times the respective basin irrigation using ratios between recommended
market price per unit of yield. Production costs contain and minimum flow rate as multipliers, while assuming
all expenses for management and inputs required to proportionality of irrigation depth and flow rate. Then
reach the respective management-related yield. Crop we derived ‘slope-related basin size factors’, which
yields and corresponding irrigation demands are based depict the maximum basin area by slope class in
on exogenous databases[24-26]. Yearly water availability percent of the optimum-slope basin area when flow
for irrigation considers internal renewable water rate is the same. For this we assumed quadratic basins
resources less water requirements of other sectors[27]. and a linear relationship between slope and basin size.
Land resources are further classified by slope and soil These slope coefficients were applied to previous soil-
type[26]. indexed optimal-slope application depths. Regarding
We also considered system application efficiencies furrow irrigation, we considered soil and slope
to project gross water demands [20]. Actual water use is influences on maximal furrow length and their
finally computed considering irrigation cost per spatial implications for allowable flow rate[29]. We
unit for all appropriate combinations of geographic transformed furrow lengths to ‘area per furrow’ and
background, crop type, and irrigation system. determined application depth per furrow (by country,
crop, soil type, and slope) for maximal area under
C. Parameterisation: Energy Requirement consideration of operating time. After modifying the
surface application depths we re-calculated yearly
Four energy sources can be used optionally: numbers of irrigation events based on total water
Electricity, diesel, gasoline, and natural gas. Energy requirements, and determined the ‘final’ application
use is a function of irrigated area, water demand, depth per event.
pressure requirement, and total irrigation time[20]. Energy use for irrigation is determined by
Pressure for pumping is determined by estimated pipe underlying pressure requirements. Total pressure
length and lifting height. requirement is the sum of sprayer pressure (for non-
On-farm irrigation scheduling is affected by various surface systems) and static head pressure to bridge
functional relationships among geographic and elevation differences. Information on sprayer pressure
technical parameters. We used a simple but consistent and static head pressure calculation were obtained
approach to represent these interdependencies by from literature[20,31]
means of ‘generalised irrigation scheduling’. In this
context ‘application depth per irrigation event’ is an D. Parameterisation: Labour Requirement
important parameter to calculate cost-effective energy
demand. We used a stepwise approach to determine Labour requirement is the number of irrigation
application depth based on the assumption of fixed events times estimated labour hours per event[28].

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To depict variations by crop type we introduced a Table 1 Model World Regions

‘crop labour factor’ as a multiplier, based on costs per
spatial unit[32,33], and used the value of maize as World regions
benchmark. [+ no. of contained individual countries/subregions]
North America (NAM) [6]
E. Irrigation Cost Western Europe (WEU) [29]
Pacific OECD (PAO) [3]
Irrigation costs include capital costs and costs for Central and East Europe w/o former SU (EEU) [12]
operation and maintenance (O&M). Operation costs Former Soviet Union (FSU) [15]
are composed of pressure-related energy costs in terms Planned Asia with China (CPA) [6]
of energy prices by source[34,35], and labour costs in South Asia (SAS) [8]
terms of average agricultural wages per hour[36,37]. For Other Pacific Asia (PAS) [18]
unavailable items we inter- or extrapolated mean Middle East and North Africa (MEA) [19]
trends. Latin America and Caribbean (LAM) [38]
At present stage, capital and maintenance costs by Sub-Saharan Africa (AFR) [49]
method were assumed to be globally identical, though
in fact they may substantially differ between The average daily calorie intake per head is
regions[12].We took capital costs per spatial unit for projected to increase in all regions. Highest rates are
center-pivot sprinklers as reference[38] to determine assumed for regions that are also predicted to have
costs of drip and surface systems, using further high population growth (Sub-Saharan Africa, most
technical information on these systems[23]. Asian countries). In regions with increasing rates of
Maintenance cost was set to 5% of capital cost for economic development, expected dietary shifts are
non-surface and furrow irrigation, and to 3% for basin represented by a growing fraction of livestock
irrigation[23,33]. products among the daily calorie intake.
Supplementary pressure from population growth in
terms of increased residential water and land demand,
III. BASELINE SCENARIOS
causing reductions in water and land available for
agriculture, were calculated using domestic water
Population growth affects agriculture through
consumption[27], and population density data[41]. We
increased demand for food. Higher demand for land
assumed that residential land growth takes the form of
and water from non-agricultural sectors increases the
urban expansion.
scarcity of these two resources. Economic
Baseline reference data on land and water
development may additionally affect food demand
endowment, and on irrigation distribution was
qualitatively and quantitatively via shifts in
obtained from FAOSTAT, AQUASTAT, and ICID
consumption patterns and increasing demand for
databases[24,25,27,42,43].
water-intense commodities.
We analyse these drivers independently and jointly
on a resolution of 11 world regions (Table 1). Increase IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
of population from 2000 to 2030, according to the
IIASA GGI A2r baseline scenario calculations, We will describe simulated trends of irrigated area
portrays the major driving force for scenario and water use intensity to analyse these results in the
simulation[39]. We estimated future food demand by context of alternative irrigation options.
multiplying regional projections of per capita calorie Rising demands for food lead to increasing crop,
intake[40] with the increment in regional population land, and water prices. We applied constant supply
according to the GGI scenarios. functions for water. Technological progress affecting
productivity is not considered in the model runs.

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The effects of the constant water elasticity on

regional water prices is presented in Fig. 1.

Fig. 3 Results – Global Irrigated Land

Fig. 1 Results – Water Index by Region Global water use intensity more or less
continuously decreases over time. Whereas water
Total water use is going to increase at only slightly intensity remains relative constant in CPA and LAM,
varying rates until about 80% of the total increase it substantially decreases in Africa and – to a lesser
projected until 2030 has proceeded. From this point extent – in SAS, despite high rates of population
increase rates decline accompanied by corresponding growth and high increases of per-capita calorie intake.
prices increases for water (Fig. 2). Globally, a general trend of combined expansion and
extensification of irrigated agriculture can be
identified.
Critical thresholds to trigger explicit shifts in
regional irrigation management towards improved
water use efficiency seem to appear when about 60-
80% of predicted global population growth until 2030
has taken place. In between 20-60%, water use
efficiency improvement is progressing at comparably
low rates.

Fig. 2 Results – Global Irrigation Water Use

Simulations indicate highest increase and totals of

irrigated area in South Asia (SAS). Increasing rates of
irrigated area expansion are also predicted for Latin
America and the Caribbean (LAM), Former Soviet
Union (FSU), Planned Asia with China (CPA), and
Other Pacific Asian states (PAS). After a relatively
long period of population growth a stronger expansion
of irrigated area is finally also simulated for Sub- Fig. 4 Results – Global Agricultural Water Intensity
Saharan Africa (AFR).

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We will face a general trend of irrigated area The timing of the occurrence of ‘global irrigation
expansion to sufficiently meet changing food shifts’ may be illustrated by simulated global surface
demands. Additional water and land pressure due to irrigation developments. A global dominance of
residential demands accelerate the increase in irrigated surface methods (especially basin irrigation), which is
area, but simultaneously trigger an extensification of predicted for the early stages of population
management practises in terms of decreasing water use development, is likely related to the specific
intensity. characteristics of rice production, in conjunction with
Residential pressure on land resources seems to regional population dynamics: As long as water supply
force shifts from rainfed to irrigated agriculture to is not a limiting factor to irrigation decisions, basin
maintain food production, whereas residential pressure irrigation can be maintained at high levels and further
on water resources restricts water intensity when water increased as the market price of rice is relatively high,
becomes scarce, and consequently approves water- basin irrigation is cheap, and food demand grows. But
efficient irrigation methods or, respectively crop types particularly regions most suitable for rice cultivation
with lower irrigation demands. also have high rates of population growth (e.g. SAS,
Food demand-induced needs for irrigation CPA), and thus are particularly exposed to occurring
expansion may be met by more water-efficient problems of water scarcity. A shift away from the
irrigation methods: Results show that after some time combination of high water demands, large areas, and
current and additional agricultural production likely water inefficient irrigation performance leads to
shifts to irrigation practises that are more water saving. considerable water savings per hectare.
On long-term a broad application of relative expensive
but most water-efficient methods is eventually
triggered. On global scale, a progressive substitution V. CONCLUSIONS
of sprinkler irrigation by drip systems appears first,
before eventually also surface irrigation decreases in The model framework is applicable to evaluate
favour of water-efficient pressurized techniques. interdependencies between policies on one side, and
In higher developed regions such ‘shifting trends’ land use related externalities, water availability, and
appear earlier and more smoothly than in less food supply on the other side.
developed regions. Besides technological standards, In this study, we use a global agricultural and
cost recovery for investment and O&M may play a forest sector model to evaluate interdependencies
major role. between development, food supply, and scarcity of
water and land. Our simulations show that agricultural
responses to population and income growth include
considerable increases in irrigated area and
agricultural water use but reductions in the average
water use per irrigated hectare.
Irrigation is a complex decision beyond the binary
decision of using irrigation or not. Different irrigation
systems are preferred under different exogenous
conditions including biophysical and socioeconomic
factors. Negligence of these adaptations would bias
the burden of development on land and water scarcity.
Without technical progress in agriculture, a
population and income level as predicted under GGI
A2r scenario for 2030 would require substantial price
Fig. 5 Results – Irrigation Methods (global) adjustments for land, water, and food to equilibrate
supply and demand.
To accurately estimate land and water scarcity, the
likely adaptation of farmers to different irrigation

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methods needs to be quantified. In particular, we 5. Bugbee, B.G. & Salisbury, F.B. (1988) Exploring the Limits
excluded from this analysis institutional and other of Crop Productivity : I. Photosynthetic Efficiency of Wheat
in High Irradiance Environments. Plant Physiol. 88, 869-878
barriers to adopt more advanced irrigation
technologies. Furthermore, our work needs to be 6. Foley, J.A., DeFries, R., Asner, G.P., Barford, C., Bonan, G.,
complemented by more detailed hydrological studies Carpenter, S.R., Chapin, F.S., Coe, M.T., Daily, G.C., Gibbs,
on the physical availability of green and blue water H.K., Helkowski, J.H., Holloway, T., Howard, E.A.,
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The study emphasises the need for integrated of Land Use. Science 309, 570-574
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technical and economic aspects of irrigation choice patterns and sensitivity to possible climate change. Global
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can provide new insights into the interdisciplinary
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change. To conclude, let us state that the present paper de Vries, F.P., Rwehumbiza, F., Sally, H., Savenije, H. &
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 9. Tilman, D., Fargione, J., Wolff, B., D'Antonio, C., Dobson,
A., Howarth, R., Schindler, D., Schlesinger, W.H.,
This work benefited from work performed under Simberloff, D. & Swackhamer, D. (2001) Forecasting
agriculturally driven global environmental change. Science
several EU research grants including GEOBENE 292, 281-284
(www.geo-bene.eu), ENFA (www.fnu.zmaw.de),
ENSEMBLES (www.ensembles-eu.org), and INSEA 10. Van Hofwegen, P. (2006) Task Force on Financing Water For
(www.insea.eu.info). It was further supported by the All, Report 1: Enhancing access to finance for local
International Max Planck Research School on Earth governments - Financing water for agriculture. World Water
Council.
System Modelling (www.earthsystemschool.mpg.de).
11. Bouwer, H. (2000) Integrated water management: emerging
issues and challenges. Agricultural Water Management 45,
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• Author: Timm Sauer

• Institute: Research Unit Sustainability and Global
Change, Hamburg University
• Street: Bundesstrasse 55 (Pavillon)
• City: Hamburg, 20146
• Country: Germany
• Email: timm.sauer@zmaw.de

12th Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists – EAAE 2008