A Sustainability Assessment of Five Major Food Crops’ Water Footprints in China from 1978 to 2010

Yuanhong Tian,Dajian Zhu,Matthias Ruth,Nicholas Morris,Jinfeng Ding

doi:10.3390/su11216179

Abstract

Rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, and sorghum are the five major crops in China, which account for 92% of the country’s total grain production and 33% of its water consumption. Combining water footprint analysis tools with sustainability assessment tools, the water sustainability of the five major crops can be analyzed. Based on ecological economics theory, this paper constructs a sustainability evaluation system of China’s five major crops’ water footprints and analyzes the national and provincial diversity of the sustainability of the five major crops’ water footprints using three dimensions: scale, distribution, and equity. We find that the interprovincial distribution equity sustainability divergence is the key bottleneck factor that restricts sustainability (more than scale and configuration). One key strategy is to arrange grain production at the national level, on the basis of considering the differences of water-resource endowment between different provinces to break through the bottleneck of the water-resource distribution sustainability of these five major food crops. This paper determines a general management model that can improve the sustainability of water resource management at the interprovincial level by comparing and analyzing the most sustainable and least sustainable provinces for the water footprint production of these five major crops.

Highlights

Feeding 22% of the world’s population with 6% of the world’s water and 7% of the world’s arable land is a major practical problem that China needs to solve
We introduce ecological economics’ theory as the foundation for sustainability assessment and analyze the Water footprints (WFs) of five major food crops in China [1]
This paper introduces scatter plot graphs to describe the relationships between the ffiive major crops’ total production WFs and the available water resources, the ffiive major crops’ total production WFs, and the arable land, the fifive major crops’ total production WFs, and the HDI at the provincial level

Summary

Introduction

Feeding 22% of the world’s population with 6% of the world’s water and 7% of the world’s arable land is a major practical problem that China needs to solve. Wheat, corn, soybean, and sorghum are five major crops that account for 92% of the nation’s total grain output and 33% of the nation’s total water consumption [1]. It is of great practical significance to explore whether water resources are sustainable for China’s food security, as well as its water-resource security. It is beneficial to explore ways to further enrich and improve the sustainability measurement of resource categories, especially water resources. Combining water footprint analysis tools with sustainability assessment tools can be used to analyze the five major crops’ water sustainability, which put both food safety and water-resource safety into consideration.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion