Luxury Crops and Water Footprints

Wine’s average global water footprint may not be enormous compared to other crops, or even other beverages, but it ranks as the most important fruit crop in the world in terms of production and economic importance (Cramer et al. 2006 and Vivier and Pretorious 2002). This is a footprint clad in Louboutins. Wine’s footprint is also unique in that it varies dramatically according to country and even region. More so than any other crop. Further, the blue water component (irrigation) is the variable in the equation that is the most dramatically variable. So, where coffee or tea have amongst the highest global average embedded water content (blue and green), the water use is predominantly green water, not blue.

“Though coffee, tea and rice – responsible for about 23 percent of the world’s blue and green crop water use – are notorious water guzzlers, the majority of these crops are grown using green water which has less of an impact on the environment than the use of blue water. In contrast, cotton, which only uses about 2% of agricultural water (green and blue), is 70 percent irrigated. Only about 15 percent of the world’s crops are irrigated, but this tiny group is responsible for 70 percent of the world’s blue water (freshwater) withdrawals” (Waterwise 2007), while 22 percent of the world’s freshwater is used for industry and 8 percent for domestic use. And when we remember that over 80% of the world’s vineyards are irrigated, and as both the need for irrigation in current planted acreage increases as well as the additional acreage that will need irrigation as the warming trend continues, a theme emerges.

L.J. Johnson-Bell