Quantifying Embedded Water in Agricultural Goods for Sustainable Water Use in Mexico

Abstract:

Security of food production is closely linked with freshwater resources. Mexico is known to be a large user of groundwater resources for the production of food commodities and most of the production is located in water stressed regions. This study explores the embedded (virtual) water of the agricultural goods produced in Mexico and track its changes over the period of 2007 to 2013 at a regional and county level. With data sets on the mass agricultural production obtained from Mexico’s government agencies and hydrometeorological datasets from NOAA, we applied the methods established by Hoekstra et al. (2011) and Marston et al. (2018) to estimate the water footprint of crop production (WFP), per ton (WFU_ton) and per dollar of production (WFU_$) for both rainfed and irrigated crops. This allowed us to evaluate the appropriation of freshwater resources for the agricultural production.

Results for the irrigated seasonal crops have shown that for the period of 2007- 2013 the average blue WFP is 1.53 x 10¹⁰ m³/county, and the green WFP is 8.26 x 10⁹ m³/county. The blue WFP increased by 45% from 2009 to 2010 and 19% from 2010 to 2011. This was as consequence of the prolonged drought from 2010 to 2012 in which Mexico experienced a severe water crisis. The average consumptive WFU_ton was lower for rain-fed crops than for irrigated crops. The blue WFU_ton average for the period of 2007- 2013 is 1.31 x 10⁷ m³/ton and the green WFU_ton 7.06 x 10⁶ m³/ton. In addition, the WFU_ton revealed the regions with the largest water consumption per ton of production, which includes the counties in the Northern and Central regions of Mexico.