Research related to the themes of water footprints and water
availability and allocation aspects usually leans heavily on
hydrological modeling (e.g. the LPJmL model by Gerten et al.
(2004), CLIRUN-II by Strzepek et al. (2011) and WGHM by Do¨ ll et al.
(2003)) or water management models (e.g. GCWM by Siebert and
Do¨ ll (2010) and IWSM by Zhu et al. (2013)) to answer the questions
‘‘will there be enough water for food’’ and ‘‘what to do to secure the
future of water for food’’. In contrast, the objective of this study is
to explore a third aspect of the water–food nexus denoted by the
red arrow in Fig. 1. Specifically, we seek to evaluate the impact of
projected irrigation shortfalls on the overall economy and
international trade in food products as well as on patterns of food
production and demand. Understanding these broader impacts of
irrigation stress is important since the large gaps between irrigation
demand and supply in key producing regions will have to be closed
by trade, and investment in and adoption of technologies; all of
which will come at a cost. Thus, the consequences of less available
irrigation will not only be felt at the local but also at the macro-
economic level, the focus of this study