Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis Fred Pearce

Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis | Water | AlterNet: "A map of world food trade increasingly looks like a map of the water haves and have-nots, because in recent years the global food trade has become almost a proxy trade in water -- or rather, the water needed to grow food. 'Virtual water,' some economists call it. The trade has kept the hungry in dry lands fed. But now that system is breaking down, because there are too many buyers and not enough sellers.

According to estimates by UNESCO's hydrology institute, the world's largest net supplier of virtual water until recently was Australia. It exported a staggering 70 cubic kilometers of water a year in the form of crops, mainly food. With the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's main farming zone, virtually dry for the past two years, that figure has been cut in half."