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Message 1-Water for food, water for life: Good water management in agriculture is necessary for a healthy environment and to provide good health and better incomes.
Message 2- Education, capacity building and awareness-raising are three fundamental stepping stones toward better water management in agriculture.
Message 3- Think about how much water is needed to produce your food. Food demand drives water demand – more food for more people will require more water. Choices about what we eat and how we produce it have enormous implications for water resources, even if global climate changes.
Message 4- Water for farming to fight poverty: Access to water for crops, animals and fish is a proven ingredient to fight rural poverty. Small scale, affordable water technologies can improve livelihoods and food security. These include low cost drip systems, pumps, community water harvesting...But technologies alone is not enough, investments in people and their institutions is also needed.
Message 5- Many people have a stake in water for food and life. Informed negotiations among multiple interest groups are required to strike tradeoffs between different interests, and innovative institutional arrangements to ensure the application of decisions.
Message 6- Agriculture can support healthy ecosystems. Producing food and fibre through agriculture has harmed natural ecosystems in the past; but it can be prevented. In agro-ecosystems, we can achieve the goals of producing enough food, improving people's livelihoods in a healthy environment.
Message 7- Grow more food with less water: with careful management and proven approaches, people can get more crops and income, and leave water for other uses. With targeting, the poor can benefit from water productivity gains.
Message 8- Unlocking the potential of rainfed agriculture: On-farm water harvesting, supplemental irrigation, soil-crop management and improved germplasm can boost productivity in poor and water scarcity-prone regions of the world.
Message 9- Re-inventing irrigation: irrigation must improve for more food and a healthier environment. The era of rapid expansion of irrigated agriculture is over: a major new task is adapting yesterday’s irrigation systems to tomorrow’s needs.
Message 10- Groundwater boom and bust? The groundwater boom, digging deeper for more water has been a huge benefit for small farmers. But the boom is turning to bust; the future may be dry wells, unless groundwater can be sustainably managed.
Message 11- Feed the cities with wastewater – grow more food and waste less water: One persons waste is another person’s wealth – use wastewater productively and be more careful with health risks.
Message 12- Freshwater fisheries provide jobs to millions of poor people worldwide and feed many tens of millions more. But, this important resource is not well looked after. Governments and business leaders need to do a better job by thinking about how much water fisheries need and taking steps to provide this.
Message 13- Livestock keeping is a key by which the world’s rural poor escape poverty. Livestock depends on water, but when poorly managed, contributes to degradation and contamination of water resources. There is growing demand for meat products and the potential conflicts with other users thus livestock-water considerations need to be better understood.
Message 14- Rice: feeding the billions while providing unique ecosystem services, such as a home for diverse plants and animals, as well as being a backbone of culture for communities.
Message 15- Conserving land, protecting water: Smallholder agricultural systems can prevent erosion by protecting the water. Soil conservation ensures better water retention by the plants.
Message 16- River Basins are squeezed: In many basins, water resources are overcommitted and rivers hardly reach the sea. Competition for water sharply increases with growing and uncoordinated water abstraction for varied human uses from up to downstream. New development in these cases means a net loss to other users and to the environment.
Message 17- Equity and Gender matters in Water and agriculture Projects! Including socio-cultural diversity of communities leads to sustainability. Men and Women of different age groups, classes and ethnicity working together are triggers of development.
Message 18- Sound water management for people’s health. Multiple-use systems - systems integrating water management for domestic use, crop production, aquaculture, agro-forestry, and livestock - are effective to reduce poverty and improve hygiene.
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