Water and Agriculture - BCPC Congress 2009
2009-09-07

“Water resources are already vital for the production of food. With serious levels of climate change and significant population growth forecast over the coming decades, future challenges are going to be huge,” warns Andy Turner, Water Resources Policy Manager from the Environment Agency.

These are some of the issues that will be covered during the exciting final plenary session on ‘Water and agriculture – understanding the biggest constraint to global food production’ at this year’s BCPC Congress in Glasgow, UK from 9 to 11 November.

The development of new agricultural technologies is a key driver for boosting productivity especially in some of the poorer developing countries such as Africa. How successful these technologies are must be complemented by improved water usage systems and the ability to irrigate the land in order to boost production in terms of consistency, crop diversification and extending production throughout the year.

With food demand set to rise by an estimated 30% in developing countries water scarcity is likely to place significant limitations on future agricultural productivity.

“Protecting agricultural water resources is essential to meeting future global food production demands,” explains Mr Mike Wade, Executive Director of California Farm Water Coalition who will also be speaking during the plenary session. “Doing so requires a balanced approach to water resource management and that is not currently happening in California. Misguided environmental policies not only hurt farm production by restricting water deliveries, they are not improving the environmental resources they were intended to help.”

With participants from over 50 countries now booked for this year’s Congress, it is set to be a real global event attracting interest from both the technical and commercial side of the world-wide crop production and crop protection industry. And to make participation at the Congress even more worthwhile, CPD accreditation has been secured from both BASIS and NRoSO, so delegates can boost their points whilst hearing about the latest crop production developments. To see the very latest conference agenda and speaker line-up log onto www.bcpccongress.com. You can now even follow the BCPC Congress on Twitter.

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