The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Enhancing Adaptive Capacity to Complex Global Challenges - Governing the Nexus: Water, Soil and Waste Resources Considering Global Change - page 29

compared to crops grown using well water. The study also found that better
wastewater management had the potential to increase returns of wastewater agri-
culture by up to six times because of double cropping and lower expenses incurred
on fertilizers. Depending on the location of individual plots, farmers also potentially
stood to bene

t from higher crop yields because of lower risk of ood damage and

pest attack.

3.7 Biofuels and Food Trade-offs or Complementarities

Although increasingly evoked as a new problem, trade-offs between biofuel and
food production are once again an issue with ancient origins. Consider the situation
of villages that deforest watershed hillslopes for fuel, at the expense of agricultural
land productivity downslope. Likewise, water-food trade-offs include land cover
change through hillslope grazing that aggravates watershed sedimentation, erosion
and flooding. A third trade-off occurs in the decision of how much fodder versus

food crops to supply, at both farm and larger agro-ecological scales. Fodder is a
food and fuel for animal nutrition. Animal draft power (energy) has declined in
most regions, as has reliance on animal dung for fuel versus manure. Fodder for
dairy production (the ' white revolution ' ) is increasing, and is more demanding than
simple grazing.
Perhaps the greatest source of current concern, however, has arisen from the late
twentieth century shift in water and cropping to supply biofuels production, mainly
through maize for ethanol production (Berndes 2002 ). National Research Council
( 2007 ) cited water quality problems (increased nitrogen runoff), as well as con-
sumptive use of water for biofuels rather than food and fodder production. It also
cited the economic inef

ciencies of biofuels production subsidies, and the potential
social impacts of higher food prices. The vision of decreased water demands, non-
food crops for cellulosic ethanol production, such as switchgrass, have not proven
commercially viable on a large scale to date (National Research Council 2011 ).
These concerns, and tensions among the water, energy and food sectors are yielding
a new politics in which multinational food and beverage corporations are coming
out in opposition to using any water for biofuel production. Some of the same
companies, sometimes accused of human rights violations when they impinge on
common property water resources or push for privatization and market pricing of
water supplies, are advocating for a human right to water for basic domestic needs,
realizing that it does not impinge upon gross industrial water demand. 6 This
position does not extend to a human right to water for basic food needs, however, as
that would constitute a signi cant volume of consumptive water use.

6

See World Economic Forum 2011 , Water Security: The water-energy-food-climate nexus.