At the opening ceremony of World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “launched a framework that will help combat food insecurity by providing methods to better manage water resources in agriculture and reduce waste,” the U.N. News Centre reports. “The initiative, entitled ‘Coping with water scarcity: An action framework for agriculture and food security‘ [.pdf], seeks to encourage practices that will improve water management, such as modernizing irrigation schemes, recycling and re-using wastewater, implementing mechanisms to reduce water pollution, and storing rainwater at farms to reduce drought-related risks, among others,” the news service notes.

“According to the [FAO], which created the framework, drought in some parts of the world has hurt global grain production and contributed to a spike in food prices nearly every other year since 2007, making it essential to focus on the way water is managed throughout the entire food chain,” the U.N. News Centre writes. “There is no food security without water security,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano Da Silva said at Monday’s event, according to the news service (8/27). “With crop growing hampered by the effects of pollution and climate change, agriculture must become ‘more efficient and fairer,’ he said, adding that nations all over the world need to ‘produce more with less’ and manage water resources well,” Agence France-Presse notes (8/27).