With less than one percent available freshwater, most of which is hidden underground, its access and its

usage
couldn’t get any better management. Cape Town’s precarious yet hopeful relationship with water emphasizes that
collective efforts towards conservation is possible though, only when it gets alarming. When it’s not, water frugality will
never be a choice nor be imposed. Mexico is reported to have extracted 50% of their ground water supply and expects
half of it be lost in the next 30-50 years with the city sinking 9 inches per year due to soil compression from their over
extraction. Despite their precarious water crisis, they still get 42% of it be lost in water network leakage. Also, Northern
India recorded a decrease of 29 trillion gallon groundwater in a decade yet they still consider growing sugarcane, despite
it being a well-needed-irrigated crop. Accordingly, agriculture and industry comprise 70% and 22%, respectively of the
freshwater use, far from the 8% personal use. With food consumption of a growing seven billion populace, the seven
fold increase in water consumption in this century is justified. Not if it leads to Day-ZERO, when water runs dry in our
taps.
Do not grow Alfafa in the desert. The irony is clear. Why grow something unsuitable in an arid land only to waste
water because they hardly pay for it. Same goes with why fix the leakages in the water network if it is flowing from the
ground. We think water is infinitely available because it is freely given to us by nature. Well, it is until it will not. Food
waste is plummeting not knowing that its takes massive amount of water for agriculture and industry to operate to feed
the populace only to be wasted. We will only cease to plant Alfafa in the desert if water will be something not for
leisure. We will only eat every grain of rice when the water that grows it will be priced. Only can we manage our
abundance when we know their value. Management will be even tougher when all that’s left is scarcity. Turns out, water
will be the most expensive commodity human race will seek after.
With these learnings, wasting food means a waste of almost 90% of water in agriculture and industry. But
farmers need to wise-up it won’t hike up to 90 percent if only they do not grow Alfafa in the desert.