70 per cent of all the world’s water usage is for crop irrigation. But he goes on to admit that the inefficiency of irrigation systems (i.e., the loss to evaporation) is falling fast, especially in China, and that there is already a well-used technique – drip irrigation – that could almost eliminate the problem. Countries like Cyprus, Israel and Jordan are already heavy users of drip irrigation. In other words, the wastefulness of irrigation is a product of the low price of water.
