In spite of the 30% increase in the food supply since 1961, significant changes are anticipated over the coming decades that will increase the challenges facing smallholders. Climate change, rapidly growing population and increasing pollution all add to the risks of water and food security. This is happening at a time when water resources management is shifting away from government planning and control to a more adaptive and flexible model involving more stakeholders, whereby farmers and smallholders are increasingly involved in decision-making and governance of water resources. Many governments, however, continue to look to their smallholders to increase food production and to find ways to produce more with less. Farmers, thus, will need to find new ways of learning and rely more on their own resources, on the private sector and on support from civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations. This paper examines the changing nature of farmer support services, focusing on the role played by emerging non-institutional actors. As water becomes the limiting resource for food production, it is crucial to understand how food markets are growing and can incentivize smallholders to produce more, and critically, how farmers are finding new ways of acquiring the knowledge and expertise they need.

Distribution and availability of global resources is highly variable over time and heterogeneous in space. With the natural or conventional supply of these resources no longer meeting a growing demand, the need to promote resource efficiency is now being paralleled with innovative approaches to conserve resources within their use cycle. These 'innovative approaches' herewith referred to as non-conventional was the subject of a 10-weeks extensive discussion among Young Professionals (YPs) in the field of irrigation and drainage. The discussion aligns to a higher objective of breeding a generation of YPs with an open mindset and multi-disciplinary approach to the challenges in irrigation and drainage. Cutting across development corridors in the water sector, this review paper presents insights on non-conventional sources of agricultural water management (AWM) as viewed from the lenses of YPs. The discussions underscore the need for broad-based approaches to resource management, building on the premise that all forms of resources are linked to form a system that provides the most effective service when managed in an integrated fashion. Non-conventional requires divergent approaches and flexibility; underlining the invaluable capabilities YPs present in AWM. Besides highlighting these roles, insights provided by YPs suggests that feeding a growing population necessitates looking beyond system efficiency to multivariate approaches of resource optimisation and utilisation in the field of irrigation and drainage.* Sources non conventionnelles de gestion agricole de l'eau: Aperçu des jeunes professionnels du secteur de l'irrigation et du drainage

<p>Water Productivity (WP), a pointer to crop performance vis-à-vis consumptive water use, has fevered debates around agricultural water use, away from scheme-based efficiency to field-scale productive value of water, that can be optimised in localities of increasing absolute and relative scarcity. Research on WP sprung from such debates to become a growth industry, that measures irrigation inefficiencies, poised towards developing economies and “low” value uses of water, to justify its reallocation across sectors, sometimes away from agriculture. While water allocation decisions increasingly prioritise sectoral productivity of freshwater resources, burgeoning food security measures to water scarcity adaptation is shifting management decisions from the purview of scheme managers to individual farming units, underscoring the need to parallel WP initiatives with the resilience of local livelihoods. In this study, we analyse the potential contribution of WP as an agricultural extensification mechanism for a water-scarce irrigated region. The Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL), is used to estimate evapotranspiration as a proxy for irrigated water consumption. An automated derivative, the pySEBAL model, is used to compute crop biomass combined with satellite-based evapotranspiration to estimate WP across 1680 heterogeneous groundwater irrigated fields in the eastern Azraq basin of Jordan. WP gap was hereafter estimated as the difference between the current field WP, to a selected productivity range, attainable within infrastructural and agroclimatic limits. By investigating the possibility of closing WP gaps, we show that a careful selection of WP thresholds to benchmark localised irrigated water consumption offers the potential to reduce seasonal irrigation water use within a range of 18 to 29% of the current consumption, without adversely affecting crop yield and related livelihoods. Such range (5 – 9 MCM[†]) for a water-scarce Azraq basin, offers substantial relief to groundwater resources, related ecosystems, and long-term catchment sustainability. We additionally demonstrate that this provides a window for agricultural extensification by leveraging farm management practices across irrigated fields. We finally propose entrepreneurial and capacity building opportunities from analysing dynamics in farmers' individual water use behaviour. WP, as a useful indicator for water reallocation under water-scarce conditions, would need to consider equitable utilisation of water resources and the resilience of local livelihoods.</p><div><br><div> <p>[†] Million Cubic Meters</p> </div> </div>