A new study in Nature Geoscience finds that global redistribution of the 14 crops that make up 72 percent of global harvests – peanuts, corn, millet, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, roots, sorghum, soybean, sugar beets, sugarcane, sunflowers, tubers and wheat – could significantly reduce water stress by making rain-fed production less susceptible to dry spells and reducing irrigation requirements.
Crop redistribution could reduce rain water use by 14 percent and irrigation water use by 12 percent. In addition to easing water requirements, 10 percent more calories and 10 percent more protein could be produced – enough to feed an additional 825 million people.