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The potential of water conservation in irrigated agriculture

To feed 9 billion people while remaining within critical planetary boundaries, our farmers need to produce more food with less resources such as water to irrigate crops. In recent years, however, a backlash has developed against overly optimistic expectations of ‘water efficient’ measures or ‘water saving’ technologies in agriculture, the sector that uses most water globally. The promise of higher efficiency has become a paradox: an increase in irrigation efficiency at the farm scale does not necessarily translate into an increase in water availability at the basin scale.