Cool Farm Tool Water: A global on-line tool to assess water use in crop production

Benjamin Kayatz,Gabriele Baroni,Jon Hillier,Stefan Lüdtke,Richard Heathcote,Daniella Malin,Carl Van Tonder,Benjamin Kuster,Dirk Freese,Reinhard Hüttl,Martin Wattenbach

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.160

Abstract

The agricultural sector accounts for 70% of all water consumption and poses great pressure on ground water resources. Therefore, evaluating agricultural water consumption is highly important as it allows supply chain actors to identify practices which are associated with unsustainable water use, which risk depleting current water resources and impacting future production. However, these assessments are often not feasible for crop producers as data, models and experiments are required in order to conduct them. This work introduces a new on-line agricultural water use assessment tool that provides the water footprint and irrigation requirements at field scale based on an enhanced FAO56 approach combined with a global climate, crop and soil databases. This has been included in the Cool Farm Tool – an online tool which already provides metrics for greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity impacts and therefore allows for a more holistic assessment of environmental sustainability in farming and agricultural supply chains. The model is tested against field scale and state level water footprint data providing good results. The tool provides a practical, reliable way to assess agricultural water use, and offers a means to engage growers and stakeholders in identifying efficient water management practices.

Highlights

With increasing global food demand, agricultural water use and consequent ground water depletion, improved farm water management is becoming increasingly critical (Godfray et al, 2010; Siebert et al, 2010; Tilman et al, 2011; Wada et al, 2012)
The Cool Farm Tool Water (CFTW) is to our knowledge the first on-line water tool for farmers, suppliers, NGOs and consumer goods producers that provides water footprint (WFP) results and irrigation requirements using gridded climate data, global soil maps and local management information
It overcomes some of the main constraints with current models as it provides default input data where users find provision of such data difficult, uses terminology known to the farmer and has an online user interface

Summary

Introduction

With increasing global food demand, agricultural water use and consequent ground water depletion, improved farm water management is becoming increasingly critical (Godfray et al, 2010; Siebert et al, 2010; Tilman et al, 2011; Wada et al, 2012). A global modelling study by Ja€germeyr et al (2016) investigated different integrated crop water management interventions, including an increase of irrigated areas. The study indicates that production could be increased by 41% and the gap in future global food demand could be reduced by 50% - but not without further increasing irrigation water consumption.

Objectives

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Discussion

Conclusion