Virtual water flow pattern of grain trade and its benefits in China

Abstract

Urbanization, industrialization and their associated water shortage pressures have brought great challenges to agricultural development and water security. Understanding the virtual water flow involved in the grain trade is critical to ensuring water security and agricultural production. However, there are few studies on the comprehensive benefits provided by virtual water flow in the grain trade. This paper proposes a linear optimization model to fill this gap. The model is used to estimate the virtual water flow via interregional grain trade within China in 2015 and corresponding benefits to resources, the economy, and the environment from both outflow and inflow comparative perspectives. Three results characterize the virtual water flow pattern of interprovincial grain trade in China in 2015: (1) In terms of resource benefit, 31. billion cubic meters of water resources were saved, accounting for approximately 39.7% of the total virtual water flow. (2) A positive economic benefit was realized, with an increase of 6.4 trillion yuan in industrial value added. (3) Certain regions with a high crop green water occupation index account for a considerable proportion of the green water of the local agricultural ecosystem. Simultaneously, massive output of virtual water would aggravate the destruction of terrestrial ecosystems. Finally, the results suggest that promoting the marketization of water resources, improving water productivity, exploring regional compensation mechanisms and improving green water conservation capacity should be considered for water security policies.

Pre- and post-production water treatment in the food processing industry: managerial perceptions of environmental pressure increase adoption of voluntary environmental management

“…, 2008). The sustained focus on agriculture reflects the primary importance attached to food availability and the economic and social significance of farming and the farm population (Wang et al. , 2019a, b).…”

Attribution Analysis of Hydrological Drought Risk Under Climate Change and Human Activities: A Case Study on Kuye River Basin in China

“…This value is also close to the difference between the simulated annual runoff and the observed annual runoff in Figure 6, likely caused by the excessive exploitation of water resources by local large-scale water industries. Therefore, if this region wants to prevent major drought disaster events that occur once in a century, it is necessary to adjust the current high-consumption water industry situation in the region and realize the sustainable use of water resources [43], for example, through the transfer of high-consumption water industries to other areas with abundant water resources, improving the water use rate of high-consumption water industries or massively increasing the proportion of reclaimed water [44]; the idea of virtual water can also be used as a reference for changing the local grain planting structure [45,46] to reduce the overall risk of large-scale drought disaster.…”

Evaluation of Water -Energy Benefit in China Based on Inter-Provincial Food Trade

“…Water, energy, and food are the basis for humankind's survival and socioeconomic development; thus, it is important to ensure water, energy, and food security [1] . China's water resources are currently under severe challenges [2] .…”

“…The existing studies focus primarily on the following aspects: (1) the coupling relationship between water, energy, and food [5] . (2) quantitative accounting of water consumption in energy production, processing, and # This is a paper for the 14th International Conference on Applied Energy -ICAE2022, Aug. 8-11, 2022, Bochum, Germany.…”

“…According to a literature review, it was discovered that there needs to be more research conducted on the water-energy-food correlation. Thus, based on past investigation, this paper conducted the following studies: (1)widen the food categories and examined the supply and demand structure of all food categories in 31 provinces in China in 2020; (2) simulated the interprovincial food trade pattern using the Lingo Software and quantitatively evaluated the inter-provincial trade volume of different foods; (3) evaluated the water footprint and energy footprint of various foods and examined the spatial distribution characteristics of energy and water consumption of food production; (4) quantitatively evaluated the inter-provincial virtual water and energy flow patterns based on the interprovincial food trade and the water and energy footprints of various foods, and evaluated the resource benefit based on this flow pattern; (5) Finally, based on the resource benefit brought by the virtual water and virtual energy flows, policy recommendations for water and energy savings were proposed.…”