Abstract
Water scarcity is a severe global threat, and it will only become more critical with a growing and wealthier population. Annually, considerable volumes of water are transferred virtually through the global food system to secure nations' food supply and to diversify diets. Our objective is to assess, whether specializing water-intensive production for exports in areas with an abundance of natural resources, would contribute to globally resource-efficient food production. We calculated Finland's virtual water net export potential (four scenarios) by reallocating the present underutilized agricultural land and combining that with a domestic diet change (three scenarios) to maximize the exports of cattle products. Assessed scenarios indicate that the greatest potential to net export virtual water (3.7 billion m 3 year -1 , 25-time increase to current) was achieved when local production was maximized with domestic and exported feed, and bovine meat consumption in Finland was replaced with a vegetarian substitute. This corresponds to annual virtual water consumption for food of about 3.6 million global citizens (assuming 1032 m 3 cap -1 year -1 ). Therefore our results suggest, that optimizing water-intensive production to water-rich areas, has a significant impact on global water savings. In addition, increasing exports from such areas by decreasing the domestic demand for water-intensive products to meet the nutrition recommendation levels, saves water resources.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1075 |
| Journal | Sustainability |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 19 Feb 2019 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
Funding: This research was funded by Strategic Research Council (SRC) through project ‘From Failand to Winland’; Emil Aaltonen foundation through project ‘eat-less-water’; University of Helsinki Research Foundation in the Doctoral programme in the sustainable use of renewable natural resources (AGFOREE) through a personal grant. This research was also supported by Maa-ja vesitekniikan tuki ry.hel Acknowledgments: Authors want to thank Johanna Mäkelä (University of Helsinki) for the help with ideation of the paper, Pirjo Peltonen-Sainio (Natural Resources Institute Finland) for her valuable comments on crop cultivation potential, Frederick Stoddard (University of Helsinki) for his much-appreciated comments on the diet change, Maija Taka (Aalto University) for her kind help with Figure 2, and Amy Fallon (Aalto University) for her respected help with the language.
Keywords
- Cattle production
- Diet change
- Land use
- Reallocation
- Trade
- Virtual water
- Water-intensive products
