World Water Week : food production and food security themes at the United Nations and global strategy meeeting in Stockholm

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Note to the Reader

Today, in 2012, nearly one billion people still suffer from hunger and malnourishment, in spite of the fact that food production has been steadily increasing on a per capita basis for decades. Producing food to feed everyone well, including the 2 billion additional people expected to populate the planet by mid-century, will place greater pressure on available water and land resources.

This report provides input into the discussions at the 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm, which is held under the theme of Water and Food Security, and was edited by Anders Jägerskog, Director, Knowledge Services at SIWI, and Torkil Jønch-Clausen, Chair of the World Water Week Scientific Programming Committee. It features brief overviews of new knowledge and approaches on emerging and persistent challenges to achieve water and food security in the 21st century. Each chapter focuses on critical issues that have received less attention in the literature to date, such as: 

• food waste, 
• land acquisitions, 
• gender aspects of agriculture, and 
• early warning systems for agricultural emergencies. 

It is our hope that the articles provoke concern and inspire action where needed.Contributing authors of the chapters are Malin Falkenmark, Ana Cascão, Mats Eriksson, Josephine Gustafsson and Jan Lundqvist of SIWI; Sibyl Nelson, Ilaria Sisto, Eve Crowley and Marcela Villarreal of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and Mark Giordano, Tushaar Shah, Charlotte de Fraiture, and Meredith Giordano from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). The production of the report was made

possible through the support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

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