The Use of Water in Agriculture in Mexico and Its Sustainable Management: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

The development of agricultural activity in Mexico is generating environmental externalities that could compromise its future. One of the principal challenges facing the Mexican agricultural sector is to find a way to continue growing without jeopardising the availability and quality of its water resources. The objective of this article is to analyse the dynamics of the research on the use of water in agriculture in Mexico and its sustainable management. To do this, a review and a bibliometric analysis have been carried out on a sample of 1490 articles. The results show that the research has focused on the pollution of water bodies, climate change, the quality of water, the application of technology in order to make water use more efficient, biodiversity, erosion, agronomic practices that reduce water consumption, underground water sources, and conservation agriculture. Although research focusing on sustainability is still in its infancy, it has become a priority field. A gap in the research has been detected in terms of the economic and social dimensions of sustainability. There is also a lack of holistic studies that include all three of the pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social).

Overview of Research on Sustainable Agriculture in Developing Countries. The Case of Mexico

“…The violet cluster combines two priority themes: water resource management and land use and its changes. Given that a large part of Mexican agriculture is developed in arid and semi-arid climates where the availability of water resources is the principal limiting factor, the sustainable management of this resource is an urgent need [38]. Mexican agriculture has advanced greatly in terms of adopting technology to improve efficiency in water use.…”

“…López-Hernández et al [81] analysed the productivityevapotranspiration relationship, concluding that the determination of productivity through evapotranspiration has a direct relationship with crop yields, as it improves irrigation efficiency. The modifications experienced in land use have been related to the different environmental impacts but particularly the degradation of water masses [38]. Vanderplank et al [82] reported that seawater intrusion into aquifers as a result of unsustainable extraction, mainly for agricultural irrigation, causes impacts on adjacent ecosystems, resulting in the loss of more than twenty native plants in the San Quintín valley.…”

“…Mexico is an agricultural power in terms of cultivated area, production and volume of exports and is one of the world's principal suppliers of food [38]. Mexico has an area of 198 million hectares, of which approximately 73% are used for agricultural activities [39,40].…”

“…However, Mexico's agricultural development has certain limitations that put the sustainability of the sector at risk. First, there exist problems concerning the availability of water for irrigation in different parts of the country [38]. On the other side, the surrounding ecosystems are being severely degraded due to the over-exploitation of the water resources, particularly in the river basins and aquifers.…”

Uso del agua en las actividades agrícolas en el distrito de riego 063, Guasave, Sinaloa

“…industria y el agua potable. Esto sin duda indica que el agua, independientemente del uso que se le dé, tendría que ser gestionada de manera estratégica y sostenible (Gabriel, 2017;Ochoa-Noriega et al, 2020).…”