Source: FARMDOC DAILY, UNIV. OF ILLINOIS, 7/24/20


The world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 (United Nations 2019), resulting in grand demand for food, energy, and water (FEW) to sustain human life and well-being. As the leading food producing country in the world, the United States therefore faces increasing pressure to meet this grand demand. Since food production requires tremendous amount of water and energy and since the chemical uses in crop production reduce water quality, how to optimize resource utilization in the FEW nexus arises as a pressing issue in the realm of agricultural production and resource management. A recent article published in Annual Review of Resource Economics presents a new perspective to address this issue: It places emerging technologies at the center of enhancing the FEW nexus. The emerging technologies discussed in the article include: gene editing, second-generation biofuels, agrivoltaics, and precision agriculture coupled with big data and machine learning. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature on the FEW nexus and on the four types of new technologies, the article documents the opportunities and barriers of harnessing these technologies to optimize resource utilization in the FEW nexus and provides an outlook for future research, which are briefly summarized in the remaining of this article.

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