9 Water Productivity in Rain-fed Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for Smallholder Farmers in Drought-prone Tropical Agroecosystems*

Considering the persistently growing pressure on finite freshwater and soil resources, it becomes increas-ingly clear that the challenge of feeding tomorrow’s world population is, to a large extent, about improved water productivity within present land use. Rain-fed agriculture plays a critical role in this respect. Eighty per cent of the agricultural land world-wide is under rain-fed agriculture, with generally low yield levels and high on-farm water losses. This suggests a significant window of opportunity for improvements. Ninety-five per cent of current popula-tion growth occurs in developing countries and a significant proportion of these people still depend on a predominantly rain-fed-based rural economy. This chapter presents the agrohydrological rationale for focusing on water productivity in rain-fed agriculture, identifies key management challenges in attempts to upgrade rain-fed agriculture and pre-sents a set of field experiences on system options for increased water productivity in smallholder farm-ing in drought-prone environments. Implications for watershed management are discussed, and the links between water productivity for food and securing an adequate flow of water to sustain ecosystem services are briefly analysed. The focus is on sub-Saharan Africa, which faces the largest food-deficit an