Consumption-Based Accounting for Tracing Virtual Water Flows Associated with Beef Supply Chains in the United States

Abstract

Enhancing the environmental sustainability of food systems requires an understanding of both production- and consumption-based impacts. As food supply chains become increasingly complex and connected, they also present a unique context in which to understand the environmental impacts of consumption. This is critical for understanding the disconnect between production- and consumption-based impacts of food systems and ultimately designing, evaluating, and implementing interventions for improving security, resilience, and sustainability of food systems. Using publicly available datasets and an optimization-based framework, we present a county-to-county level network model of beef supply chains in the United States. The model is used to connect and attribute the consumption-based impacts of beef consumption to production in distant locations, specifically focusing on water-based impacts. We specifically focus on the beef system because of its importance in the diet of U.S. consumers and in environmental sustainability discourse. The findings from this work show the spatial disconnect between the consumption and production counties with approximately 22 billion m3 of blue virtual water being transferred for the year 2017, mainly from the northern and southern plains toward the coasts. These results highlight the importance of understanding environmental impacts from both production and consumption perspectives.

Tracing Nitrogen Flows Associated with Beef Supply Chains: A Consumption-Based Assessment

“…We leverage a previously developed county-level beef network model for tracing flows throughout 4 major steps in beef supply chain: (i) ranch, (ii) feedlot, (iii) slaughter, and (iv) consumption. 31 We refer to ranch as the location of animals during the calf production, or cow-calf phase, and feedlot as the location of animals during both backgrounding and finishing phases. In addition, mother cows in the cow-calf phase are referred to as beef cows, and cattle ready at the end of the finishing phase are referred to as fed cattle.…”

“…This model was devised to trace animal and meat movements in the United States. Further details of the optimization model are described in Ostroski et al 31 This previous model assumed that animal feed consumed was sourced from the same county as animal operations, with similar feed intake rations published by Statistics Canada. 32 This is a major shortcoming in attempts to quantify nitrogen releases from animal feed production.…”