Mapping security and reducing risk across agri-food supply

GreenEye’s first test of water supply-demand for crops

There is a lot of reporting being made for crop water balance at present- it is in deficit for adequate production and crop security- and like all food security warnings in developed nations they happen when there is surplus, in this case- the current flood warnings and a look out of the window provides a vista of constant rain. However, the deficit is real and some noteworthy work we delivered for digital agronomy apps in the last year worked out the water requirements of crops for evapotranspiration- this graphic shows a screenshot of UK wheat crop water requirements- the red shading is where over 100 thousand tonnes of water are transpired by the wheat crop per sq km for the last annual sow-to-harvest cycle, balancing this with water available from surface water and aquifers is getting to be a much tighter margin year-on-year, time to make haste.

Future climate, changes in agronomy and cropping limit

“Think oranges don’t grow in the UK? Give it 60 years.” Back when I was teaching agriculture and sustainability in the 2000s, I used to joke that Yorkshire wasn’t exactly the place for pineapples, mangoes, or oranges whenever someone asked why we couldn’t just eat local produce. But things change. I’ve been working with GAEZ4 data and if we continue on our current path, in around 60 years we could be growing oranges in a corridor from Newcastle to Bristol — yielding 3 to 9 tonnes per hectare. I know there are few caveats but climate change is now about how we adapt.