More than 75% of the water that people use goes to agriculture.  Food, of course, is a basic need, and access to food has been declared a fundamental human right.  Allocating a lot of water to growing food is a good thing, generally speaking, but precisely because agriulture uses so much of the available fresh water, it's important to ensure that water is being put to good use.  This line of reasoning leads to such questions as what crops are being grown, how are they being grown, and who is doing the farming?  What benefits is society receiving from the agriculture sector that is using all that water?  Can society realize equivalent benefits with less water being used?  Are there ways that society's benefits could be enhanced while keeping water use constant?  And what kind of benefits are we talking about?

When we look at agri-culture, with an emphasis on the "culture" part of the word, we can frame a series of questions about how culture (society and the values of the people in that society) benefits from the farming sector.  This approach does not deny the fundamental importance of growing food to support the basic needs of people.  We all need food, but that very necessity has been used to justify food production that is very costly in terms of environmental, social, and cultural impacts.  

Putting People, Culture, and the Environment First

What would an agricultural sector look like that placed the priorities of people, culture, and the envrionment on an equal footing with production?  In a word, it would look "sustainable" because production depends on a sustainable natural resource base, and it depends on healthy farmers to do the work, guided by cultural values that help everyone stay happy and productive.

The Water and Culture Institute focuses on two sets of issues that are critical to the wise and sustainable use of agricultural water (click for details)