Food for Water-Scarce Futures

To mark the UN 2023 Water Conference (March 22-24, New York), the agency created The Drop Store, a collection of conceptual supermarket products that demonstrate how food staples will be impacted by water insecurity. Items include bottles of discoloured drinking water and small quantities of foodstuffs like corn, cheese, salmon, meat and potatoes marked with super-inflated prices reflecting future shortages. Meanwhile, pill-like pizza-flavoured disks represent the potential failure of key crops like wheat, tomatoes and olives, and packs of dried insect protein offer a replacement for water-intensive livestock.

Each product features a label to denote the type of water crisis connected to it – including drought, flooding and pollution – whilst an on-pack QR code takes the consumer to a webpage with a plethora of information about water scarcity’s impact. For further insights, read Food Packaging Pathways 2023: Labelling Focus.

Elsewhere, as unpacked in Planet-First Ingredients, water insecurity is already having a devastating impact on a broad range of crops, with even some drought-hardy varieties like agave feeling the effects. As a result, a growing number of manufacturers are using low-water plants like sorghum (see US children’s food start-up Fresh Bellies’ new snacks), kernza (used in pasta and beer by US brand Patagonia Provisions), and fonio (as seen in Brooklyn Brewery and UK snack company Yolélé’s beer).

Some experts are also suggesting an increased uptake in crops that are gene-edited for hardiness to futureproof the food system – see The Agri-Tech Age. For more strategies designed for water-short futures, read Climate Crisis in Focus and Water Warriors.