The goals of the ‘Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Securing Water for Food: A Grand Challenge for Development Competition’ is to to source and accelerate innovations in the following areas that will enable the production of more food with less water and/or make more water available for food production, processing, and distribution.
Water Efficiency and Reuse – especially targeted at the food value chain. This will become a greater necessity as water availability is threatened by competition between industrial, agricultural, and energy uses. Improving water efficiency and reuse has tremendous potential water-saving benefits that may have multiplier effects at various levels of a country’s economy.
Water Capture and Storage. These systems are in high demand in many regions where rain occurs at limited times. With projected increases in rainfall variability due to climate change and increased demands for food production, capture and storage systems at various scales are needed to secure water supplies throughout the year and build resiliency to drought and floods.
Salinity and Salt Water Intrusion. In coastal areas, overpumping and rising sea levels are leading to saltwater intrusion, forcing farmers to use marginal quality water for irrigation. With more than 30% of the world’s population living in coastal areas and drawing food supply from fertile deltas, urgent solutions are required to reduce the impacts of salinity on the quality of aquifers and food production.
The focus areas of the Program are improved technologies for irrigation, real-time water quantity and quality monitoring, post-harvest water demand reduction, salinity reduction, agricultural innovations that have a clear and direct impact on water usage, and other water re-use/efficiency/storage activities within the food value chain. The competition will also support business and financial innovations that enable the increased dissemination and adoption of relevant science and technology solutions; for example, new distribution models or payment schemes. Innovations in areas that are not described here but that address one of the focus areas above are welcome.
Some of the cross-cutting issues that can be included are:
- The lack of cost-appropriate technologies for use in low-resource settings;
- Insufficient user-centered design in technology development;
- Poorly developed supply chains;
- Lack of distribution networks;
- High up-front investment costs;
- Lack of confidence that developing and emerging countries have the market mechanisms necessary for growth;
- Absence of proper financing tools;
- Limited access to information that would enable entrepreneurs to make informed investment, management, and marketing decisions; and
- Insufficient information and training to farmers and other end users regarding how to use available technologies/innovations.