Remarkable successes and new challenges to cope with requirements for food and water are analyzed. Trends in demography, food preferences and consumer habits are scrutinized together with their implications for human well-being and natural resources.

Making best use of variable and limited water resources presumes proper management and efficient technologies, but also a worthwhile use of goods and services produced, for example, food. Reduction of food losses and waste, and reversing trends in overweight and obesity promise significant water savings. Transformations of food systems in this direction provide opportunities to meet human nutrient and food requirements in a resource-effective manner.

In line with the principle of the Sustainable Development Goals, ‘no-one should be left behind’, governments, producers and consumers must be involved in efforts to ensure food security and nutrition. Naturally, farmers are major actors in food systems. The business community is showing a commitment to contribute to food security and nutrition and to reduce water risks.

Consumers are dynamic drivers as well as beneficiaries, victims and culprits in water and food systems and need to internalize resource-use efficiency in their behavior, for example, by reducing food waste and aiming for better nutrition and sustainable diets.