• On 16 October, World Food Day 2023 shines a spotlight on the need to preserve the planet's water resources.
• With agriculture consuming 72 per cent of the world's drinking water, we need to produce food using less water.
• One answer comes from dryland farming, a cultivation method based on good soil management practices.

16 October marks World Food Day: the theme chosen for 2023, "Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind", seeks to draw attention to the need to protect the planet's water resources, upon which all life on Earth depends. These are increasingly under strain, in fact, from rapid population growth, urbanisation, climate change, pollution and poor management.

According to data reported by the Fao, over recent decades per capita drinking water resources have fallen by 20 per cent, and today 2.4 billion people live in countries subject to water stress; yet forecasts estimate that by 2050 global water demand will increase by 35 per cent.

World Food Day 2023: preserving water starting with agriculture

It is agriculture that is the sector most responsible for global water consumption, accounting for 72 per cent compared with 16 per cent for industry and 12 per cent for municipalities for housing and services. Some 95 per cent of the food we consume comes from fields, but faced with the need to preserve resources and adapt to ongoing climate change — since 2000 floods have increased by 134 per cent, while the number and duration of droughts have risen by 29 per cent — we must find ways to grow food using less water whilst ensuring at the same time that it is distributed equitably; competition for access to water resources is, in fact, an increasingly common cause of armed conflict.

Dryland farming: how to grow crops with little water by caring for the soil

The answers to all of this are many and varied, ranging from technological solutions such as precision irrigation to virtuous soil management practices. With regard to the latter, dryland farming demonstrates how it is possible to cultivate land in areas with minimal rainfall and limited irrigation availability. Dryland farming relies primarily on soil cultivation techniques that increase its capacity to retain water deep within the ground, creating water reserves and preventing losses. These are natural practices such as, for example, ploughing, hoeing and mulching, which reduce the growth of weeds that steal water from crops, prevent water evaporation and oxygenate the soil. Dryland farming is particularly well suited to crops such as vines, olives, cereals (especially wheat and barley), legumes (in particular broad beans, chickpeas, lentils and peas), potatoes, onions and garlic, pistachios and hazelnuts, and tomatoes.

Where dryland farming is practised

Concrete examples of this practice can be found on the island of Lanzarote, in Spain, where the enarenado method is used — growing crops beneath a layer of sand in order to prevent moisture evaporation; in Senegal, where the Fruiting the deserts project has grown a food forest in desert sand through the use of fertilising trees that nourish the soil and act as an umbrella for other plants, alongside thermocompost techniques to prevent evaporation; on the island of Pantelleria, in Sicily, where vines are grown as free-standing bushes, drawing on the moisture and dew of the volcanic soil and on rainwater; also in Sicily, the Valledolmo cooperative grows the Siccagno tomato without water, exploiting the characteristics of the land, whilst the Karadrà cooperative in Puglia grows Aradeo tomatoes, legumes, wheat and figs through crop rotation, leaving fields to rest, and working the soil to make the most of the water and moisture present.

But the idea underpinning dryland farming is also beginning to attract interest in northern Italy as part of the process of adapting to the changed climate scenario: to cite just one example, last spring, on the occasion of the 16th edition of the Sagra della nocciola del Monferrato, discussion turned to "thinking along the lines of dryland farming strategies, exactly as happens in the regions of southern Italy to manage climate change".