Water in Farming

Water in Farming: Sustaining Life and Nurturing the Future

“Water has always been the lifeblood of all biological growth, but if we’re going to continually increase the human population on this one planet, we’ll need to work more efficiently with the finite water we have.”

When we think of farmers we usually think about the foods they grow rather than them farming for transport fuels, cooking oils, flowers, timber and ingredients for perfumes, medicines and clothing (wool/cotton). Regardless of what’s farmed, all farming needs water.

Literally, at the root of all farming is water retained in the soil structures of fields, hedgerows, habitats, and all parts of the wider farming landscape. Rain, by maintaining air humidities, moving through plants and animals, topping up water levels, then continuing its ‘journey‘ within the ‘worldwide water cycle, keeps everything alive and growing.

On land however, water begins in the soil

A farm’s relationship with water is crucially important. All farms need fresh and healthy water, whether they use an organic or inorganic business model. With not too much and not too little water, roots create pathways through the soil and their vegetation protects the surface from being stripped away by heavy rain and/or strong sunlight. As creating produce from land strips nutrients out of soils, these need replacing and, as my mother would tell me, way before I got into farming, “Where’s there’s muck there’s money”.

Nutrient wash-out

Timely muck-spreading matters. There’s nothing quite like trying to enjoy a countryside picnic downwind of a newly muck-spread field or anywhere near a field recently spread with inorganic fertilisers after a rainfall. Both pong in different ways and produce different results. Organic material returned to the land will improve soil structure and long-term fertility. Inorganic fertiliser improves short-term yield. Spreading either just before a heavy rain storm will result in some nutrient loss – washed into watercourse habitats with algae the winner as nearly all other river inhabitants suffer population loss.

• Farmers manage their land to keep feeding future generations.
• Industrialists use farm land to gain short term profits.

……….  Water serves both.

Then there’s the Water Table/ Aquifer

The familiar idea of an aquifer as some sort of underground lake is misleading. Groundwater can sit in vast caverns beneath our feet and you can even have freshwater lakes under the seabed, but most groundwater is held within the pores and fractures of soil, sediment and rock. So think of an aquifer more like a vast underground sponge that stores water, allows water to move through it, When left to Nature, this replenishes by rainfall. In the hands of big business, it can at times be excessively abstracted, so reducing the amount available for farms and homes.

“A farmer who maintains and improves a field’s ability to capture and retain rainwater is doing more than protecting this year’s crop – they are investing in the ground’s ability to support whatever comes next.”

More efficient use of water

For some farms, irrigation is needed – and technology comes to the rescue. Satellite imagery has long enabled farmers to identify precisely where water and nutrients are needed, allowing them to apply resources more efficiently. Drip irrigation for example uses networks of plastic micro-pipes to deliver water close to plant roots.  And if you’re a farmer who’s not into plastic-use … keep wetting your entire field.

Some crops benefit from mulching to reduce evaporation from the soil; some crops suffer as mulch can provide the ideal conditions for plant-nibbling beasties!

As you might imagine – at our field centre we collect, retain, recycle and circulate water to reduce losses and unnecessary pressure on natural water resources.

World of Water Charity supports research into Food Security

Some of the most interesting research developments in farming deliberately blur the boundaries between agriculture and aquaculture. Recirculating Aquaculture Systems, or RAS, continuously treat and recirculate water used for fish farming, with only a low proportion needing replacement. Aquaponics takes this further by connecting fish and plants in a shared water cycle.

Fish produce nutrient-rich waste. Plants take up those nutrients, helping to clean the water, which can then be returned to the fish. Instead of treating waste simply as something to dispose of, the system turns it into part of the next stage of production. The principle is an old one, even when the technology is new: one organism’s waste can become another organism’s resource.

The same thinking is increasingly being applied to nutrients, energy and organic residues. Anaerobic digestion can turn organic material into biogas, while carefully managed organic matter can return nutrients and carbon to soil. The challenge is to design farming systems in which fewer useful things are thrown away.

 If you think you can turn a random mix of pipes, tubs, tape, and buckets into an aquaponics system, accept our Ponic Challenge.

New ways of producing food

Agriculture is also beginning to look beyond conventional crops and livestock. Hydrogen-oxidising microbes can be cultivated in water-based systems, using hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce protein-rich microbial biomass. Research and commercial development suggest that such systems could produce food with substantially less land and water than some conventional protein sources.

These approaches do not make traditional farming obsolete. They add another possibility to the agricultural toolbox, particularly in a world where land, water, nutrients and energy are increasingly interconnected.

Aquaculture itself is another reminder that farming has never been confined to dry land. Fish, shellfish, algae and aquatic plants can all be cultivated, and water is not merely an ingredient in these systems: it is the living medium in which production takes place.

The water that leaves the farm

Water does not necessarily stay where the crop is grown. A flower grown under irrigation in Africa and sold in Europe carries with it a connection to the water system in which it was produced. The same is true of vegetables grown in hydroponic systems, cotton, coffee, fruit, nuts and countless other traded products.

This is sometimes described through the idea of virtual water or a product’s water footprint. It does not mean that every litre of irrigation water physically travels inside the product. Much of the water used by a crop returns to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration, infiltrates the soil or moves elsewhere through the water cycle. But the product nevertheless represents a connection to the water used to produce it.

A bunch of flowers can therefore become a surprisingly good water story: soil, rainfall or irrigation, plant, flower, international trade and consumer. Follow the water … and the story quickly becomes one of geography, economics, climate and fairness, as well as farming.

When farming meets industry

The history of Coca-Cola’s bottling plant at Plachimada in Kerala, India, provides a striking example of what happens when competing demands were placed on groundwater. Local communities argued that industrial groundwater extraction was contributing to falling water availability, while investigations examined groundwater levels and the relationship between the factory and surrounding wells. A Kerala groundwater assessment recorded particularly large declines in groundwater levels near the factory during the period studied. The legal and scientific history is more complicated than a simple story of one company causing one decline, but the underlying question remains powerful: who owns groundwater – the person who owns the land above it, the company that can extract it, or the community and ecosystems that depend upon it?

It is a question that can be asked almost anywhere. Rain falls into one landscape, an aquifer may cross another boundary, a farm draws from it, a factory draws from it, a river receives what remains and a product carries some of the value elsewhere. Water does not recognise our administrative boundaries.

Farming, inheritance and the human time horizon

There is another dimension to farming that is easily missed when we talk only about technology. For generations, many family farms were effectively long-term projects. The land was not simply something to exploit for the next harvest; it was something that might be inherited by children or grandchildren. That creates a powerful practical incentive to maintain fertility, build soil, retain rainwater and leave the farm capable of producing again next year and the year after that.

We do not need to romanticise the past. Farming has always changed, and some historical practices damaged soils, habitats and water. But the idea of inheritance introduced something important into the economics of farming: a reason to think beyond the immediate return.

The UK’s changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief, which came into effect on 6 April 2026, have changed the inheritance-tax treatment of qualifying agricultural and business property. Whatever one’s view of the policy, it raises a wider question about farming economics. If the financial incentive to pass a farm intact to the next generation changes, does the farmer’s time horizon change too? Could a system that rewards short-term financial return encourage some decisions that make less sense over decades, such as relying more heavily on purchased inorganic fertilisers rather than investing in soil structure and organic matter?

That is not an accusation against farmers. Farmers have to make businesses work within the economic conditions created around them. The question is whether today’s informal educational influences promote students to focus on the immediate future rather than the land quality requirements of future generations. I recall one primary school project we supported to teach organic farming methods where the parents, mostly farmers, demanded the lessons stopped. Says it all hey.

The boom-and-bust problem

Perhaps this is one of the deeper problems facing farming and human civilisation more generally. We can become very good at exploiting a boom. A plentiful resource becomes valuable, extraction increases, production increases and investment follows. The landscape is simplified to make the process more efficient, and the short-term returns look attractive. Then the resource begins to decline, the soil loses fertility, the aquifer falls, the river becomes polluted, the habitat disappears or the market collapses. The consequences arrive later, often somewhere else, and often for someone else to deal with.

It is almost as though a viral mental pattern can spread through human systems: maximise the boom, postpone the bust, and pass the consequences onwards. Yet the individual farmer, business or consumer may simply be responding rationally to the incentives in front of them. If everyone else is chasing the boom, the person who protects the future can appear economically foolish.

Learning from the past, preparing for the future

Water carries the consequences. The field and the river are not separate stories. Water connects them, which means the health of farming, soil, groundwater, rivers, lakes, wetlands and ultimately the sea cannot be considered in isolation.

Ancient irrigation systems, waterwheels, Archimedean screws, windmill pumps, reservoirs, drainage ditches and traditional farming practices all tell stories about how people have learned to work with water. Modern satellites, sensors, precision irrigation, hydroponics, aquaponics, recirculating aquaculture and microbial protein tell a newer part of that same story.

Neither the past nor the future provides a single answer. The challenge is to combine what we have learned with what we are discovering, while recognising that every intervention has consequences somewhere else in the water cycle.

One Water. One continuous story

As we explore these themes in our upcoming exhibitions, we invite farmers, scientists, and innovators to share their insights, contribute exhibits, and engage in this vital conversation. Together, we can ensure that our collective respect and commitment to water will secure the future of farming and, by extension, the future itself.

Further Reading:

Environment Agency — Agriculture and the water environment: 2026 report
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/agriculture-and-the-water-environment-2026-report

FAO — Irrigation management
https://www.fao.org/land-water/water/agricultural-water-management/irrigation/en

FAO — Rainfed agriculture
https://www.fao.org/land-water/water/agricultural-water-management/rainfed-agriculture/en

International Water Management Institute — Managing Water and Fertilizer for Sustainable Agricultural Intensification
https://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/Publications/Books/PDF/managing_water_and_fertilizer_for_sustainable_agricultural_intensification.pdf

Nature Biotechnology — Baltic bacteria sink CO₂ into smoothies
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-022-01507-8