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Cited by 260

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 10 of the 10 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Integrated crop water management might sustainably halve the global food gap

Open access
Jägermeyr, J, Gerten, D, Schaphoff, S, Heinke, J, Lucht, W, Rockström, J·2016·Environmental Research Letters

Abstract

As planetary boundaries are rapidly being approached, humanity has little room for additional expansion and conventional intensification of agriculture, while a growing world population further spreads the food gap. Ample evidence exists that improved on-farm water management can close water-related yield gaps to a considerable degree, but its global significance remains unclear. In this modeling study we investigate systematically to what extent integrated crop water management might contribute to closing the global food gap, constrained by the assumption that pressure on water resources and land does not increase. Using a process-based bio-/agrosphere model, we simulate the yield-increasing potential of elevated irrigation water productivity (including irrigation expansion with thus saved water) and optimized use of in situ precipitation water (alleviated soil evaporation, enhanced infiltration, water harvesting for supplemental irrigation) under current and projected future climate (from 20 climate models, with and without beneficial CO 2 effects). Results show that irrigation efficiency improvements can save substantial amounts of water in many river basins (globally 48% of non-productive water consumption in an 'ambitious' scenario), and if rerouted to irrigate neighboring rainfed systems, can boost kcal production significantly (26% global increase). Low-tech solutions for small-scale farmers on water-limited croplands show the potential to increase rainfed yields to a similar extent. In combination, the ambitious yet achievable integrated water management strategies explored in this study could increase global production by 41% and close the water-related yield gap by 62%. Unabated climate change will have adverse effects on crop yields in many regions, but improvements in water management as analyzed here can buffer such effects to a significant degree.

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Crossref · 10.1088/1748-9326/11/2/025002

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Metadata

Authors
Jägermeyr, J., Gerten, D., Schaphoff, S., Heinke, J., Lucht, W., & Rockström, J.
Venue
Environmental Research Letters
Published
2016-02-01
Volume
11
Issue
2
Pages
025002
ISSN
1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2282377530
Cited by
260
References
10
FWCI
33.82
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Integrated crop water management might sustainably halve the global food gap. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1088/1748-9326/11/2/025002
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Jägermeyr, J., Gerten, D., Schaphoff, S., Heinke, J., Lucht, W., & Rockström, J. (2016). Integrated crop water management might sustainably halve the global food gap. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/2/025002

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.