Abstract
Iran’s focus on food self-sufficiency has led to an emphasis on increasing water volumes available for irrigation with little attention to water use efficiency, and no attention at all to the role of consumption and trade. To better understand the development of water consumption in relation to food production, consumption, and trade, we carried out the first comprehensive water footprint assessment (WFA) for Iran, for the period 1980–2010, and estimated the water saving per province associated with interprovincial and international crop trade. Based on the AquaCrop model, we estimated the green and blue water footprint (WF) related to both the production and consumption of 26 crops, per year and on a daily basis, for 30 provinces of Iran. We find that, in the period 1980–2010, crop production increased by 175%, the total WF of crop production by 122%, and the blue WF by 20%. The national population grew by 92%, and the crop consumption per capita by 20%, resulting in a 130% increase in total food consumption and a 110% increase in the total WF of national crop consumption. In 2010, 26% of the total water consumption in the semi-arid region served the production of crops for export to other regions within Iran (mainly cereals) or abroad (mainly fruits and nuts). Iran’s interprovincial virtual water trade grew by a factor of 1.6, which was mainly due to increased interprovincial trade in cereals, nuts, and fruits. Current Iranian food and water policy could be enriched by reducing the WFs of crop production to certain benchmark levels per crop and climatic region and aligning cropping patterns to spatial differences in water availability and productivities, and by paying due attention to the increasing food consumption per capita in Iran.
Highlights
Iran, the second largest country in the Middle East, is facing great water scarcity, which becomes manifest in drying lakes and rivers, dropping groundwater tables, land subsidence, the increasing contamination of water, water supply rationing and disruptions, crop losses, salt and sand storms, the increasing migration of people away from the hardest hit areas, and damage to ecosystems
Over the period 1980–2010, the population in Iran grew by 91.5%, but the total harvested area (HA) for the eight crop categories increased by 129%, and total crop production (CP) by 175% (Figure 2)
Our analysis shows that food self-sufficiency increased in line with Iranian policy
Summary
The second largest country in the Middle East, is facing great water scarcity, which becomes manifest in drying lakes and rivers, dropping groundwater tables, land subsidence, the increasing contamination of water, water supply rationing and disruptions, crop losses, salt and sand storms, the increasing migration of people away from the hardest hit areas, and damage to ecosystems. Most regions receive less than 100 mm of precipitation per year, and 75% of the country’s precipitation falls over only 25% of the country’s area. About 75% of the precipitation is offseason, i.e., it falls when not needed by the agricultural sector [2]. The per capita renewable water resources in the country decreased by 29.1% and reached
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