"With growing water scarcity in many parts of the world and projections that indicate the need to increase agricultural production and, concurrently, agricultural water use, it is increasingly advocated to focus efforts on improving agricultural water productivity and efficiency—and thus achieve more crop per drop. Many international organizations concerned with water management are also promoting these efforts, and significant public and private investments are being made in both developed and developing countries. Yet some serious problems are associated with this approach. They include conceptual issues, the methods used for measuring agricultural water productivity and efficiency, and the application of these concepts and methods in different contexts—all of which influence the choice of interventions and the evaluation of their implementation.
The report aims to shed further light on these issues: first, by clarifying some of the underlying concepts in the discussion of agricultural wa
