Webinar #3: Water and Food: Agricultural Flows and Water Markets

Date and time:	September 28, 2011 (Watch the recorded webinar.)
Speaker:	David Zetland
Description:	Worldwide, our freshwater resources are depleting. Many even argue that we have reached the point of crisis. Some people claim the end of abundant water means the beginning of food shortage. But that’s not necessarily going to happen. Food shortages and water shortages are both caused by prices that are too low or policies that block trade from surplus to deficit areas. We need to retool institutions that govern water supply and use, that were designed in a context when water was abundant. This webinar will discuss physical and institutional dimensions affecting agricultural water flows, farmers’ irrigation and crop decisions, distortions caused by faulty policies and how water markets can be harnessed to manage scarcity.
About the speaker:	David Zetland is Senior Water Economist at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, working on the EPI-Water (“Evaluating Economic Policy Instruments for Sustainable Water Management in Europe”) project. He runs the popular Aguanomics blog, and is the author of the recent publication ‘The End of Abundance: Economic Solutions to Water Scarcity.’