Replacing Imports of Crop Based Commodities by Domestic Production in Finland: Potential to Reduce Virtual Water Imports

Abstract

Global water scarcity is a severe threat facing humanity today and it is expected to become even more alarming in the future. Agriculture is the biggest user of freshwater and large volumes of embedded virtual water in food products are traded through the global food system annually. Although Finland has vast water resources, it imports large quantities of virtual water-partly from countries suffering from water scarcity. In this article, we present a novel combination of the virtual water study together with an analysis of the potential reallocation of the outsourced production of rice, soybeans and rapeseed, from the water resource-efficiency point of view. To assess how Finland could reduce the outsourced water consumption by these three crops, we evaluated Finland's potential to replace their imports with local comparable products: domestic barley and oats, field peas and faba beans, and rapeseed, respectively. This replacement would both potentially ease the global pressure on already stressed regions and increase the agricultural diversity of the local agricultural systems. We found that by replacing the imports of the selected crops, considering the realistic potential in Finland, up to 16% of the blue water and almost 30% of the green water embedded in crop imports could be reduced. Although Finland is a minor player in the global food markets, our study presents a highly relevant case of how an industrialized country, with a relatively small population, can contribute to the sustainability of food systems globally.

Cattle Production for Exports in Water-Abundant Areas: The Case of Finland

“…In this study, we assessed Finland's potential to increase virtual water net exports by intensifying water-intensive animal production in an area with rich water and farmland resources, and combining that with a diet change towards less water-intensive protein sources. There have been previous studies on Finland's negative external water footprint [31,36] and agriculture's negative outsourced environmental impacts [35,37]. However, in this study, we wanted to estimate the positive impact, that Finland could have with its rich water and farmland resources.…”

“…However, Finnish natural resources are underused [38], and there is potential to decrease imports of arable food crop commodities to Finland by domestic production. Sandström et al [31] studied, that the replacement of imported rice, soybeans and rapeseed with domestic crops, would reduce embedded blue water requirement by up to 16% and green water by almost 30% of the total crop related virtual water imports [31]. As complementary to the current national studies, our research focuses on increasing Finland's virtual water net exports related to cattle production.…”

“…Regarding the feed for bovine livestock, Peltonen et al [42] explained that Finland has a great potential to shift towards fully domestic protein sources, including legumes in grass mixtures and rapeseed meals, but also more marginally malting residues, pea and faba bean [42,74,75]. As Finland only has one growing season, and agriculture has been characterized as a monoculture [42], diversifying the domestic legume cultivation-for food and feed-would enrichen the agriculture and landscape [31].…”

“…In addition to the global overviews, there are local studies about the agricultural land use efficiency comparing the outsourced and (re)localized production to meet the domestic food demand (see e.g., for the UK, Reference [28]; Sweden, Reference [29]; USA, Reference [30]; Finland, Reference [31]). However, not much is known about an export potential of specializing water-intensive production to countries with an abundance of natural resources.…”

Food Preferences in Finland: Sustainable Diets and their Differences between Groups

“…Previous studies presented that the environmental impacts, when even recognized, are more known and associated with packaging, food waste and transportation, rather than food consumption [19,50]. Furthermore, the impacts of global food crises might also seem very distant to Finnish citizens, although Finland benefits significantly from global trade [83,89,90]. Thus, it might be that Finnish citizens are simply not aware of their environmental impact in local or global contexts.…”