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In a guest post for Huffington Post, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board of Nestle S.A., discusses the biofuel-water nexus in a post highlighting an upcoming Creating Shared Value Global Forum.

Brabeck-Letmathe writes:

More than one billion people go to bed hungry every night and 200 million more people are malnourished today compared to the mid 1990s. This represents a reversal of nearly 30 years of progress. At the same time global demand for food increases at a vigorous rate: every day 200,000 people are being added to the global population and yet our agricultural productivity per hectare is falling. If we are to feed these additional mouths we are going to have to double agricultural output in the next 40 years.

Water is the life blood of food production and the most important factor in the sustainability of myriads of businesses contributing to international food supply. I have been arguing for some time now that the biggest resource challenge humanity faces over the short to medium term is not oil but water. The 2030 Water Resources Group, of which Nestlé is a member, has estimated that global water requirements will grow by over 50 percent over the next 20 years. Such levels of usage will be 40 percent greater than what can currently be sustainably supplied. What this means in human terms is that unless things change, 5 billion people will live in water-scarce areas by 2025.

The political encouragement of biofuels is only exacerbating this situation. Every litre of biofuel made from irrigated maize or soybeans requires between 2,000 and 9,000 litres of water. It is a phenomenally water-intensive approach and the real value of the fuel is far from proven. Depending on crop type and geography, CO2 savings compared to fossil fuels can be very small — in some cases only 10 percent. In light of agriculture already accounting for 70 percent of global water usage, it is clear that biofuels represent an obsolete means of addressing the legitimate concern of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

For more on this issue, check out Biofuels and the Growing Specter of Water Wars.

More on Brabeck-Letmathe’s discussion on the biofuel-water nexus.