Lending a Hand

Bolivia Struggles with Drought

Drought Disasters Around the World

Devastating Drought Means Many Go Hungry

The Giving Season

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In California, over 100 million trees have died due to the drought.  In Tennessee the drought is posing a huge threat to the cattle industry.  Pastures have dried up and farmers have resorted to feeding the cattle hay which is normally saved for the winter months.  Similar stories are reported out of Georgia as well.

Wildfires have ravaged over 54,000 acres of forest, protected areas and farmland in parts of Peru.  Peru is experiencing the regions worst drought in at least half a century.  Wildfires have burned over 100,000 acres of land across seven southern U.S. states leading to mass evacuations.

As devastating as those issues are; other countries are faring much worse.  The severe drought in Madagascar has left 330,000 people on the brink of famine.

As Bolivia faces its worst drought in at least 25 years, the government has been forced to declare a state of emergency.  It is estimated that the drought has affected 125,000 families and threatened 716,605 acres of agricultural land and 360,000 head of cattle.

The drought lasted several years and forced hundreds of thousands of poor farmers off their lands and into cities that were already overcrowded by refugees (1 million or so, by most accounts) from the war in neighboring Iraq.

However, the drought alone may not have been what forced the farmers from their land. The cancellation of diesel and fertilizer subsidies also had a crippling effect on the farmers. Political, economic and technological forces at work in the modern world also play a major role in economical collapse.

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Water is such an invaluable resource and the issues surrounding it’s use, conservation, and quality are immense.  In 2001 the focus was : Water for Health – Taking Charge, 2004 focused on: Water and Disasters, 2010 was Water Quality.  This years objective is: Water and Food Security.

Water is the key to food security.  People with better access to water tend to have lower levels of undernourishment.  Drought is the most common cause of severe food shortages and has caused more deaths during the last century than any other natural disaster.

The logic behind that is quite simple; it takes water to produce food.  All the food from crop and livestock product, inland fisheries, forest products, requires water.  No water – no food.  Think about this, it takes about 1500 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of wheat, but it takes more than 15,000 to produce 1 kilogram of beef.  That doesn’t include the water used for processing the meat, milk, and other dairy products; nor does it account of the water needed to produce feed for the cattle.

To keep pace with the growing demand for food, it is estimated that 14% more freshwater will be needed for agricultural purposes in the next thirty years.  With growing concerns regarding water scarcity is that even possible?  Questions raised as the focus of this years World Water Day give us hope that by better using and protecting the water resources, following a healthier, more sustainable diet, reducing food waste, and rethinking water usage; we can produce more, better quality food with less water.

World Water Day 2012