Reaching it is not easy though; it comes at a cost for the farmers who have to pay for the equipment to dig a well and for the running cost of the electricity required to bring water out to the surface. [...] In the aftermath of the previously mentioned food shortages, a series of government incentives aimed to increase the country’s food supply, including a subsidy for electricity to pump water for irrigation (Devineni and others, 2022), have contributed to the increase in the number of wells across India since the 1960s (Jain and others, 2021). [...] While above-ground transboundary water resources receive comparatively more attention, it should be noted that the secondary importance given to the topic of groundwater in the international research and policy agenda puts groundwater resources at risk, and it is likely shaped by the lack of understanding of the importance of groundwater for food and water security. [...] This aquifer is the same one that Saudi Arabia heavily used to source the water for the country’s extensive wheat production at the end of the twentieth century, and a potential expansion of Saudi Arabia’s current rates of abstraction is regarded as a major risk to Jordan’s long-term reliability on the Disi aquifer (Müller and others, 2017). [...] For example, the High Plains aquifer in the United States supplies one-third of all groundwater for irrigation used in the country (Dennehy and others, 2002) and supports over $35 billion worth of crops such as wheat and soy (Basso and others, 2013), accounting for as much of 40 per cent of the vegetables, nuts and fruits consumed in the USA, more than 40 per cent of the nation’s beef production,.
- Pages
- 27
- Published in
- Germany
