Our Mission: To facilitate the adoption of transformative on‐farm treatment solutions that enable the safe use of nontraditional irrigation water on food crops.

Our Vision: To be a national resource bringing together research, outreach, and education to effectively reduce the nation’s agricultural water challenges that are exacerbated by climate change.

CONSERVE was launched in 2016 through a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Health to the University of Maryland School of Public Health. 

We employ a systems approach, bringing together diverse disciplines to research and facilitate energy-efficient, water reuse in the food production environment, here in Maryland and across the nation. We then share this new knowledge through extensive outreach, use it to improve public policy, and employ experiential education to teach, train, and inspire future leaders.

To expand our educational efforts, we won a prestigious $3 million graduate student training award in 2018 from the National Science Foundation to launch UMD Global STEWARDS. Our vision is for this program to become a national model for the preparation of lifelong learners, stellar science communicators and distinctive professionals ready to realize transdisciplinary food-energy-water nexus solutions to sustain future generations.

To scale our approach globally, we have also partnered with scientists at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Together, we are creating the Global Alliance for Sustainable Water Reuse, Food and Health. The goal of the alliance is to enable safe water reuse for crop irrigation worldwide, providing science and technology-based solutions to advance agriculture and protect public health. We are also affiliated with the Global FEWture Alliance, a University of Maryland-based grant that works toward interdisciplinary research-to-action, community-based capacity building, and exceptional experiential education for the next generation of public health and agricultural scientists.

By bringing together a diverse transdisciplinary team across multiple continents to collaborate toward a real global solution, CONSERVE has turned the prospect of reversing the global food, energy and water crisis from wishful thinking to a plausible reality.

CONSERVE is focusing on two key regions, the Mid-Atlantic and Southwest, thereby highlighting two diverse climates with differing needs regarding agricultural water reuse. Participating CONSERVE partners are depicted in the map below.