Background Water stress poses serious threats to human lives, livelihoods and business stability. As per WRI, more than 61 countries face high to extreme levels of water stress a narrow gap between supply and demand leaves countries vulnerable to fluctuations like droughts or increased water withdrawals, which is why we’re seeing more and more communities facing their own “Day Zeros” and other crises. It is important to understand cascading effects of climate change and how it impacts food security and nutrition among vulnerable smallholder farmers and build resilience.

1. Giriraj Amarnath
Research Group Leader: Water Risk and Development Resilience
Contributors: Surajit Ghosh and Niranga Alahacoon
Measuring nutrition-water interactions
from space

2. Background
• Water stress poses serious threats to human lives, livelihoods and business
stability.
• As per WRI, more than 61 countries face high to extreme levels of water stress a
narrow gap between supply and demand leaves countries vulnerable to
fluctuations like droughts or increased water withdrawals, which is why we’re
seeing more and more communities facing their own “Day Zeros” and other
crises.
• It is important to understand cascading effects of climate change and how it
impacts food security and nutrition among vulnerable smallholder farmers and
build resilience.

3. Cascading effects of climate change impacts
on food security and nutrition
Source: FAO
Three research questions the presentation will address?
1. How far the water risks impacts on agricultural production and its
effect on food security and nutrition?
To spatially quantify we have used two global data i.e. Agriculture
production estimates from SPAM model and water risk from WRI?
2. How diverse the cropping system globally?
40 major crops were geospatially analyzed to identify the
diversification strategies to water stress
3. How do we address the food security and nutrition through
drought management measures?
Integrated drought monitoring and early warning with contingency
plans to promote alternate crops and advisory to enhance agriculture
production

4. Knowing the global crop diversity (water Stress vs Resilience)
• 40 crop types data combined to map crop diversity (9 km spatial resolution)
• Data obtained from SPAM Model and implemented in Google Earth Engine
• Regions in South Asia, SE Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe, West Africa, parts of east and
Southern Africa as well as Southern Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay etc.

5. Which regions are ready for crop harvest?
• Global crop estimates of areas
likely to be harvest
• Uses near real-time satellite
data and Google Earth Engine
• Supportive governments to
reach out to the field extensions
officers for appropriate action.
Source: IWMI
https://wle.cgiar.org/thrive/2020/04/17/satellite-maps-can-help-nations-make-critical-food-production-decisions-amid

6. Data Source/credit : MODIS, GFSAD, Copernicus
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Which regions are ready for crop harvest?

7. Connecting Water Stress and
agriculture production and its
impact on food security
“A third of irrigated crop production faces
extremely high water stress”
Overall Water Risk
Flood Risk
Drought Risk

8. • Country wise Rice Yield (%) in different water risk (overall) category;
• India ranks 13th for overall water stress and has more than three times the population of
the other 17 extremely highly stressed countries combined;
• Nearly 75% of the crop yield are in extreme high risks category compared to countries like
US or France, with groundwater resources are severely overdrawn, largely to provide
water for irrigation;
• Below table shows crop yield stress with combined floods and drought for India has
extreme high category when compared to China;
Connecting Water Stress and agriculture production and its
impact on food security
Low Low - Medium Moderate High Extremely High Drought/Flood
0.17 0.06 - 1.75 2.07 Low
0.14 0.02 0.05 6.64 12.17 Low - Medium
0.51 0.12 0.59 18.32 9.45 Moderate
- 0.25 1.29 15.77 11.87 High
1.15 0.29 1.99 10.12 5.22 Extremely High
Low Low - Medium Moderate High Extremely High Drought/Flood
1.28 0.65 9.09 4.62 - Low
0.27 0.78 19.48 7.76 - Low - Medium
0.18 0.47 20.75 9.30 - Moderate
0.30 0.39 11.74 5.48 - High
0.27 0.43 5.26 1.50 - Extremely High
INDIA CHINA

9. Crop-specific conversion factors for calories, protein, and price
FAO’s FAOSTAT database
• Current production was calculated for each crop and each pixel as the product of yield
(tonne ha-1) and harvested area (ha).
• Crop yields were converted to kcalha-1, Kg protein ha-1, and USD ha-1 using global
values from the FAO’s FAOSTAT database

10. Benefits of optimized crop distribution in terms of water use,
production, and economic values
• For India the overall water risks is nearly 40 – 45% against China with 30% and USA with 12% under high to extreme high
risks with a significant impact on the agricultural risks;
• India’ produces 105 million tonnes of wheat and 115 million tonnes of Rice of which nearly approx. 123 MT calorie of
wheat and 195 MT calore of rice is under high to extreme risks category;
• Diversifying the crops in the high water risks region would increase calorie and protein production while also greatly
enhancing economic value;
India China USA

11. Drought monitoring, planning and management to enhance
agriculture resilience
Key objective is to strengthen research and improve currently operational South Asia Drought Monitoring System
(SADMS) for drought planning, monitoring and management
• SADMS integrates diverse information from weather
forecast, satellite data-based drought indices to
generate composite product (IDSI) on a weekly basis;
• SADMS disseminate products to various stakeholders
in drought response and contingency plans to mitigate
drought risks;
• Other applications : Drought insurance, bundling with
drought tolerant seeds in building resilience

12. South West Monsoon (LRF
– IMD and SACOF/WMO)
Extended Range Forecast
(Monthly Lead)
Drought Monitoring and
Early Warning (SADMS and
other national initiatives)
Digital and Dynamic Agriculture Drought Contingency Plan
Strengthening resilience and food security through Digital and
Dynamic Agriculture Drought Contingency Plans for India

13. IDSI-Temporal Change- Amravati
Impact- Amravati
• Ridge and furrow sowing, BBF for
Soybean
• Farm bundling, contour cultivation
• Harvested Water for protective
irrigation
• Drought resistant short duration
varieties
Crop yields
• Conservation furrows: Additional
yield of 490 kg/ha
• Sowing across slope- Additional yield
of 535 kg/ha
• Short duration drought resistant
varieties (JS-93-05)- Increase in yield
by 560 kg/ha
Impact- Kurnool
• Drought tolerant varieties for Pigeon pea,
• Promotion of less water consuming
crops- setaria, millet based intercropping
systems
• Farm ponds, Conservation furrows
Crop yields
• Setaria with Pigeon pea is a promising
intercrop than sole crop
• Performance of different millets with
Pigeon pea as intercrop assessed. Brown
top millet recorded higher yield than
other millets
• Net income from Setaria is higher than
cotton
Drought Management & Information Dissemination - IMPACT
Preparedness and real time measures taken up:

14. • It is abundantly clear that farmers are facing growing water stress from climate change, and that the greater
implementation of diversified agricultural systems may be a productive way to build resilience into
agricultural systems.
• There is a clear need for robust and systematic monitoring nutrition from space and unfolding the climate
change impacts in developing crop diversification strategies;
• Crop diversity is critical not only in terms of production but also because it is an important to reduce the over
exploitation of groundwater;
• Diversified agriculture can have a large role in protecting food security and production in regions and
ensuring farmers to have access to chemical, structural, or technological resources to adapt greater climate
variability of the future.
Way forward

15. Thank You
Source: IWMI
IWMI would like to acknowledge and thank the contribution
from CGIAR Water, Land and Ecosystems, Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japan’s MAFF), and Indian
Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for supporting this
initiative.
You may reach via email for any comments a.giriraj@cgiar.org