Water Footprint of Food Quality Schemes
Abstract: WF (WF, henceforth) has recently taken ground as an indicator of water consumption to be used in assessing the impact of productions over freshwater resources, and to design more sustainable production policies in respect to water use. In this study WFWF is applied to compare the impact on water resources of non-conventional and certified products with that of reference products obtained through conventional production schemes. To perform this comparison, we analysed 23 products selected among Organic, PDO and PGI, and defined as FQS (Food Quality Schemes), and their conventional counterparts. In this paper we focus on the on-farm phase of the production chain. The results of the analysis show that no significant differences emerged between the FQS and the REF products except for Organic products, which showed a better performance than their conventionally produced references for one of the indicators, the blue WF. WF is computed as the amount of water needed for a product unit (m3 /kg), we computed also the impact that the different production systems exert per unit area (m3/ha). In this case significant differences emerged between FQS and REF products.
Funding source: European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 678024
Contributors: Antonio Bodini, Sara Chiussi , Michele Donati, Valentin Bellassen, Áron Török , Lisbeth Dries , Dubravka Sinčić Ćorić , Lisa Gauvrit , Efthimia Tsakiridou , Edward Majewski , Bojan Ristić , Žaklina Stojanović , Jose Maria Gil Roig , Apichaya Lilavanichakul , Nguyễn Quỳnh An and Filippo Arfini
engleski
2021
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Keywords: agricultural production; crop water requirement; evapotranspiration; irrigation; yield; water footprint