According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), by 2025 approximately two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages by 2025.
A few winters of low rainfall can easily result in reduced reservoirs levels, poor harvests, major road cracking, and possible water restrictions being put in place to conserve the little water that is available. Both South Africa and the UK were also plagued by runaway wildfires which cost thousands of hours of manpower to extinguish and millions in damages.
Sustainable Initiatives to Reduce Water Usage for Fruit Farming in the UK and South Africa
High-street retailer M&S, who is a major food retailer, is well aware of the challenges that water shortages in countries from which they source their food ca have on their business. Reduced yields and delayed harvests, coupled with impaired quality could negatively affect their bottom line.
Using the WWF’s water risk tool, they produced a map that highlighted four countries from which they source goods as being considered at risk of water quality and scarcity; these are the UK, South Africa, Spain and Kenya. This map indicated that the main water impact for M&S lay within its supply chain, not its stores which has led it to adopt various approaches, including a number of “sustainable factory and farming for the future†programmes which are embedded with clear water guidance.
Various water initiatives, including new management systems, have already reduced water use for fruit-growing in the UK by 45% in the UK alone.
Many farmers now use probes that release water only when needed when growing soft fruit. This initiative has led to improvements in fruit quality, flavour and yield while also resulting in an almost 60% reduction in water-use.
Initiatives in Spain, including one new growing system, have seen water-use reduced by a massive 35% in just one season, and stone fruit growers in the Western Cape have also significantly reduced their water use, as have farmers in Kenya, who have seen significant water reduction and improved wastewater treatment thanks to its water stewardship programme.
By developing catchment-wide approaches to water stewardship, often in partnership with NGOs, and encouraging suppliers to develop their own water stewardship plans, M&S is making a huge difference in the agricultural water footprint; the footprint for an M&S peach for instance is only 297 litres per kilogram as opposed to a global average of 771 litres per kilogram.
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