Land and water footprints associated with rice and maize losses in Brazil

Eduardo Botti Abbade

Land Use Policy, 2020, vol. 99, issue C

Abstract: Food loss and waste (FLW) implies the loss of valuable natural resources; this has a negative impact on economic, environmental, and social issues, worldwide. As a prominent world food producer, Brazil has high levels of food loss and, hence, loss/waste of natural resources. This study aims to estimate the amount of the land footprint (LF) and water footprint (WF) associated with rice and maize losses in Brazil. The investigation involved the analysis of annual data obtained from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE) regarding the planted areas, harvested area, and the production and loss of rice and maize in Brazil from 1988–2017, in order to estimate the LF and WF associated with rice and maize losses. In Brazil, rice loss is responsible for an average annual LF of 400,000 ha with a negative trend (slope) of 13,852 ha/year and maize loss is responsible for an average annual LF of 1.26 million ha with a negative trend (slope) of 7973 ha/year. In Brazil, the average annual LF of rice loss is about 11.46 % of the rice planted area and the average annual LF of maize loss is about 9.34 % of the maize planted area. Rice loss is associated with an average annual WF of 3.06 billion m3 and maize loss is associated with an average annual WF of 7.37 billion m3. The average annual WF per ha of planted area for maize and rice losses is 533 m3/ha and 949 m3/ha, respectively. The results reinforce the need for promoting actions to drastically reduce FLW, worldwide. This study encourages the adoption of more drastic public policies in order to reduce FLW and, consequently, decrease the waste of natural resources and curtail the associated environmental impacts.

Keywords: Food loss; Sustainable development; Land footprint; Water footprint; Food systems; Food supply chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837720308115
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:99:y:2020:i:c:s0264837720308115

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105106

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().