Fig. 2: Green, blue, and economic water scarcity before large-scale land deals (before acquisition, i.e., with the areas and crops cultivated before the acquisition), in the current scenario (current use, i.e., current cultivated area and intended crops) and under potential cultivation expansion (100% cultivated, i.e., entire acquired area cultivated with intended crops).

A location is classified as green water scarce if rainfall alone is not enough to meet 90% of the crop-water requirements¹⁹ It is found that thirty-five land deal locations (≈134,000 ha) were not affected by green water scarcity and were therefore suitable for rainfed production. An additional 83 locations (encompassing ≈ 578,000 ha) were both green water-scarce and blue water scarce (i.e., unable to sustainably meet the water requirement of pre-existing crops). Irrigation was found to be practiced (likely unsustainably) in 30 out of those 83 locations (≈12,000 ha). In the 77 remaining locations (≈114,000 ha) green water was scarce, but blue water resources were sufficient to meet the irrigation demand of pre-existing crops; only 29 of these locations, however, were equipped to some extent with irrigation systems (≈30,000 ha), leaving 48 locations (≈100,000 ha) in conditions of agricultural economic water scarcity (i.e., irrigation was not practiced despite the availability of blue water). Therefore, crop production in these areas would benefit from increased investments in irrigation infrastructure and would not compete for water resources with other farmers in the area.