A food security approach to analyse irrigation efficiency improvement demands at the country level

This paper used a food security approach in an attempt to analyse how much food will be needed in China in years 2030 and 2050; to produce that amount of food, at what scale should the irrigation area expand; to realize the development of that irrigation area, how much should the irrigation efficiency improve with the total irrigation water use kept within the range of the goals set up by the Chinese government; and what water management options should be adopted to improve the irrigation efficiency? The results show that there was US$ 3.1 billion worth of grain deficit in the year 2000 and there will be US$ 10.8 billion and US$ 3.2 billion of grain deficits in years 2030 and 2050 respectively at the medium population growth and irrigation area development scenarios. To meet the total food demand in years 2030 and 2050, 138 and 109 million ha of gross irrigated area are needed, which required 69% and 85% of surface water and groundwater irrigation efficiencies in 2030 and 63% and 83% of surface water and groundwater irrigation efficiencies in 2050 provided the total irrigation diversion is kept around 420 and 400 billion cubic metres marks respectively.