The book explores how beer has shaped the world during its 13,000 year history. It was one of reasons behind the drive to grow grains, it motivated labourers to build the pyramids and it provided a safe alternative to contaminated water. The books focuses on past and present beers, highlighting the importance in people’s lives through four themes; innovating new technologies, ensuring health and well-being, building economic and political statuses, and imbuing life with ritual and religious connections.

The Colorado river supplies tens of millions of people and millions of acres of farmland with water, but its supply is shrinking. Investigations by ProPublica reveal that 20 families use the majority of water consumed by farmers and more than some entire states. 

This paper, co-authored by Table member Francesca Harris, calculates the ground and surface water use associated with cereal traded between states in India. It uses a new modelling method based on supply and demand data to quantify sub-national food flows in the absence of relevant food trade data. It reports that 154 km3 of water travels between Indian states through the trade of cereals each year. 41% of the cereals traded are produced in states with over exploited groundwater.

This book (publication date 23 October 2020), takes an interdisciplinary look at groundwater management and sustainability. It covers some food-relevant topics, including the sustainability of groundwater used in agricultural production and trade and the political economy of groundwater irrigation in India.

This textbook uses case studies and models to present an interdisciplinary perspective on the interactions between food, energy and water.

This paper finds that over ten billion people could be fed within the constraints of four planetary boundaries (biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater use, and nitrogen flows), if the food system undergoes a “technological-cultural U-turn”.

This paper finds that replacing some rice cultivation in India with other cereals such as sorghum and millet could improve nutrient supply, decrease carbon emissions and water use, and increase the resilience of India’s food system to extreme weather events. 

The US think tank Breakthrough Institute has created an interactive series of graphs to visualise how the environmental impact of farming in the United States has changed over time, covering land use, nitrogen loss, water, herbicides, soil erosion, greenhouse gas emissions and spending on research and development.

This book, originally published as a special issue of Water International, explores how the concept of “virtual water” is relevant to agriculture, trade and sustainability.