Agricultural production will need to increase by about 60% by 2050 to meet the growing food demand of a planet that will have 1.5 billion more people than today, with the sharpest growth concentrated in Africa and Asia. Yet even as expectations mount for agricultural systems to deliver not just more calories but better nutrition, increasingly variable rainfall patterns are causing traditional rainfed production methods to become less reliable.
Irrigation, once seen largely as a tool for boosting yields, is emerging as a critical pillar of resilient food systems. By reducing smallholder farmers’ dependency on rain alone, irrigation can significantly lower their vulnerability to the adverse effects of changing weather patterns, making food and nutrition security a more attainable goal in the decades ahead.
It will be expensive to sustainably expand irrigated cropland in emerging markets. Impact financing organizations such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) play an important role by investing in solutions that increase access to, and use of, sustainable irrigation technologies. Cooperation is needed among these organizations and governments, development institutions, agribusinesses, irrigation technology companies, and farmers to scale up adoption of efficient irrigation solutions that optimize water delivery, improve productivity—and, as a result, strengthen food supply chains, reduce malnutrition, and lift communities.
