Abstract
The limited available water resources and competition among different water use sectors have become the main constraints of food security and sustainability. Faced with the inability to expand the area of cultivated land due to urbanization and population growth, one of the biggest challenges and risks for developing countries is to ensure the supply of food quantity and quality under extremely limited water resources. To achieve water-saving and improve calorie supply by adjusting crop production allocations, three objectives—of minimum blue water footprint, maximum calorie production, and each crop production no less than the reference level of nine main crops in China—were achieved using a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II. The results display that compared with the reference year, model Maize+ (maize production increased) had significant blue water saving (~32%), the blue water footprint of crop production in all provinces reduced, and its calorie production increased by 4%. This solution is not realistic for China because wheat and rice production need to be reduced by 82 and 80%, respectively. However, model Citrus– (citrus production decreased) reduced the blue water footprint of crop production (~16%), and increased calorie production (~12%). Compared with other solutions, it is a sustainable crop production structure that is easier to realize because it is better at meeting the production of each crop. Therefore, China can appropriately increase the planting area of maize and reduce the planting of citrus and other crops that consume more blue water and produce fewer calories to ensure the security and sustainability of food supplies. However, the improvement of water saving-technology, rationalization of agricultural water resources management, crop production allocations mentioned in this study, and other efforts are necessary to achieve this goal.
Highlights
Water crises have become one of the top five key global risks (WEF World Economic Forum, 2017)
According to the situation of crop production allocations displayed on the z-axis, we divided the results into 5 categories (8–9, 7–8, 6–7, 5–6, and 4–5) based on scores
Comparing the blue water footprint (BWF) of crop production and calorie production (CP) in each scored segment with the reference year, we found that the crop production allocations in 5–6 points with the largest BWFs reduction (17–32%) increased the CPs (4–13%) second only to those of 6–7 points
Summary
Water crises have become one of the top five key global risks (WEF World Economic Forum, 2017). By 2050, the global population will increase by 2 billion (UN United Nations Department of Economic Social Affairs Population Division, 2019); if we do not seek transformation, more water will be consumed to produce calories that sustain human life than now. Competition for limited water resources among different industries is increasing in developing countries. Faced with the inability to increase the cultivated land area owing to the expansion of urban areas and population growth (Seto and Ramankutty, 2016; Liu et al, 2020; Sun et al, 2020), one of the biggest challenges and risks for developing countries is to securing food quantity and quality under extremely limited water resources. We must consider both natural resources and food supply to provide acceptable solutions (Davis et al, 2017)
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