Virtual water content for meat and egg production through livestock farming in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The concept of virtual water content (VWC) may facilitate an understanding of total water demand for commodity production. The water consumption for livestock production forms a significant fraction of freshwater demand in arid regions, i.e., Saudi Arabia. In this paper, VWC was estimated for different livestocks in the 13 regions of Saudi Arabia. The VWC for camel production was also estimated, which has not been investigated in the previous studies. The overall VWC for livestock in Saudi Arabia was about 10.5 and 8.9 billion m 3 in 2006 and 2010, respectively. This study shows the decreasing trend of overall VWC in producing livestock in Saudi Arabia. The VWC were highest in Riyadh followed by Eastern region, Qaseem, Hail, and Makkah with ranges of 3587-4112, 1684-2044, 1007-1331, 644-810, and 504-715 million m 3 /year, respectively. The results demonstrate that a shift in diet from the high VWC meat to low VWC meat may reduce the overall VWC for livestock production. The findings of this analysis provide an assessment of the quantity and trend of water demand for livestock production in Saudi Arabia, which is useful to assess the development of an information-based agricultural water management strategy.

The one-humped camel: The animal of future, potential alternative red meat, technological suitability and future perspectives

“…However, the current changes in camel farming practices (the Bedouin system based on camel mobility called H’mil vs. semi or intensive systems) based on intensification of the management could modify this conception. According to Chowdhury et al (2017) , the unit VWC of camel is 3.5 and 1.7 times the unit VWC for sheep and cow, respectively. One kg of cow and camel meat required 14.6 and 19.7 kg of feed supply, respectively.…”

Spatiotemporal Variation and Driving Factors of Water Supply Services in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area of China Based on Supply-Demand Balance

“…According to the definition and classification of water consumption in the ARIES model, the WSSs demand model mainly includes four categories: agricultural water, industrial water, domestic water (including urban domestic and rural domestic water), and livestock water [44]. In the WSSs demand model calculation, this paper refers to the study of Chowdhury [45], selecting the animal virtual water indicator to measure the actual amount of water for livestock. Virtual water is the virtual amount of water quantity condensed in products and services, and as animal products are sold and traded, the water used to produce those products is traded [46].…”

The one-humped camel: The animal of future, potential alternative red meat, technological suitability and future perspectives

“…However, the current changes in camel farming practices (the Bedouin system based on camel mobility called "H'mil" versus semi or intensive systems) based on intensification of the management could modify this conception. According to Chowdhury et al (2017), the unit VWC of camel is 3.5-and 1.7-times the VWC for sheep and cow, respectively. One kg of cow and camel meat required 19.7 and 14.6 kg of feed supply, respectively.…”