10/06/2025 | News release | Archived content
IWMI researchers found a 9% increase of global crop blue and green water consumption between 2010 and 2020. The spatially distributed data and the model will benefit decision-making in agricultural water management in the Global South.
Agriculture is the largest water user worldwide, in terms of both blue and green water - blue water being the water in rivers, lakes and groundwater - and green soil water formed by precipitation and available to plants. Global demand for water for all uses is expected to rise by 20-30% by 2050. With global demand for food and feed growing, the agricultural demand for water will continue to increase. Concurrently, water demands for health, energy, cities, industries and ecosystems need to be met.
There is, however, a persistent lack of reliable water data, especially sectoral water demand data. To address this gap, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) collaborated with the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and the University of Alabama to provide a detailed baseline for researchers, a global database and an easy-to-use tool, CropGBWater which is published in the Nature Food journal.
"Our new robust yet easy to use open access tool - CropGBWater - calculated global blue and green water consumption of 46 crops in a resolution of 10 kilometers for the year 2020. By providing all results open access, we help close the water data gap, a widespread constraint on water management in the Global South," says Davy Vanham, Senior Researcher - Integrated Modeling and Assessment at IWMI and the lead researcher of the paper.
The post Open access model and data on blue and green water consumption of crops to help close water data gap first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).