Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
-
Book (stand-alone)Technical bookReuse of water in agricultural systems
Follow the Water
2025Also available in:
No results found.Many irrigation technologies labelled as potentially "water saving" actually often fail to deliver expected water savings and can even increase water use by farmers, benefiting crop production but failing to effectively reallocate water. A key reason is the common oversight of return flows and water reuse in irrigation systems. This guidance document investigates water reuse rates in irrigation systems, compiling a database from a literature review that finds a lack of data, information and understanding of water reuse. To better assess and manage these flows, the document introduces the Follow the Water approach, which was developed to track water movement within and between irrigation systems and blocks. The accompanying Follow the Water tool offers a practical method for initial analysis of intervention impacts and serves as a valuable resource for training and education. The study’s main recommendation is to apply the Follow the Water approach when planning irrigation technology interventions, ensuring a more accurate understanding of water dynamics and avoiding unintended increases in consumption. This shift in assessment can support more realistic and effective strategies for achieving water savings in agriculture. -
Book (stand-alone)Manual / guideFollow the Water
Manual
2025Also available in:
No results found.Agriculture demands and consumes more water than any other economic sector and globally is responsible for more than 85 percent of all human-induced water withdrawals. The trend of increasing water scarcity across many countries will continue as gaps between water demand and supply are projected to widen due to factors such as economic growth, economic development, land degradation, and climate change. Within agriculture, many solutions are directed towards irrigated agriculture, as irrigation is the largest consumer of freshwater withdrawals in almost all water-scarce regions. However, a growing body of evidence shows that in many cases of expected water savings through improved irrigation technologies, there is actually an increase in water consumption. This publication is the starting point for using the Follow the Water (FtW) tool, which seeks to help users understand water flows in irrigation systems and detect the impacts of changes in irrigations systems' allocations, consumptions and return flows. Users in education and training contexts, and in the initial design of irrigation systems can use the FtW tool to follow flows and the reuse of water in a simple and understandable manner. -
Book (stand-alone)Technical bookEfficient agricultural water use and management in paddy fields in Zambia
National outlook
2022Also available in:
No results found.An increasing number of regions in the world are frequently facing water shortage, and water demand is likely to grow in the next 20-30 years due to intensified agriculture, population growth, urbanization and climate change. Future demand of water by all sectors will, thus, require as much as 25 to 40 percent of water to be re-allocated from lower to higher productivity and employment-oriented activities, particularly in water stressed regions. As such, these reallocations are likely to come from agriculture due to its high share of water use. In view of the projected rise in water demand in both agriculture and non-agricultural sectors, appropriate actions that increase water use efficiency especially in irrigation are crucial to sustainably enhance agricultural production and productivity. In Zambia, rice is one of the most important cereal food and is at the centre of major socioeconomic activity for a large share of rural population. Paddy field system are especially water demanding as it needs continues inundation of the field during most of the growing season. In Zambia, there is no controlled infrastructure for paddy irrigation and nearly all of the rice is grown under paddy field system in the country rainfed lowlands. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been active to increase the understanding of the status of water use efficiency and water productivity in Zambia through the project “Efficient Agricultural Water Use and Management Enhancement in Paddy Fields”, funded by the Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
-
BookletCorporate general interestFAOSTYLE: English 2024The objective of having a house style is to ensure clarity and consistency across all FAO publications. Now available in HTML, this updated edition of FAOSTYLE: English covers matters such as punctuation, units, spelling and references. All FAO staff, consultants and contractors involved in writing, reviewing, editing, translating or proofreading FAO texts and information products in English should use FAOSTYLE, together with the practical guidance on processes and layout questions provided in Publishing at FAO – strategy and guidance.
-
-