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

Elina Lehikoinen, Tuure Parviainen, Juha Helenius, Mika Jalava, Arto O. Salonen and Matti Kummu
Additional contact information
Elina Lehikoinen: Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, P.O. Box 15200, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Tuure Parviainen: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland
Juha Helenius: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland
Mika Jalava: Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, P.O. Box 15200, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Arto O. Salonen: Faculty of Social and Business Studies, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, FI-70211 Kuopio, Finland
Matti Kummu: Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, P.O. Box 15200, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: Water scarcity is a severe global threat, and it will only become more critical with a growing and wealthier population. Annually, considerable volumes of water are transferred virtually through the global food system to secure nations’ food supply and to diversify diets. Our objective is to assess, whether specializing water-intensive production for exports in areas with an abundance of natural resources, would contribute to globally resource-efficient food production. We calculated Finland’s virtual water net export potential (four scenarios) by reallocating the present underutilized agricultural land and combining that with a domestic diet change (three scenarios) to maximize the exports of cattle products. Assessed scenarios indicate that the greatest potential to net export virtual water (3.7 billion m 3 year −1 , 25-time increase to current) was achieved when local production was maximized with domestic and exported feed, and bovine meat consumption in Finland was replaced with a vegetarian substitute. This corresponds to annual virtual water consumption for food of about 3.6 million global citizens (assuming 1032 m 3 cap −1 year −1 ). Therefore our results suggest, that optimizing water-intensive production to water-rich areas, has a significant impact on global water savings. In addition, increasing exports from such areas by decreasing the domestic demand for water-intensive products to meet the nutrition recommendation levels, saves water resources.

Keywords: cattle production; diet change; land use; reallocation; trade; virtual water; water-intensive products (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1075/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1075/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:4:p:1075-:d:207079

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().