ABSTRACT
A lot of water is needed to make our drinks, but much more water is used to produce our food. Wheat is the crop with the largest global water footprint. Fifteen per cent of the total water footprint of crop production in the world relates to growing wheat. Rice is a close second, accounting for 13 per cent of the water footprint of global crop production, and maize a good third with 10 per cent. When we focus on the blue water footprint alone, we find that wheat and rice put more or less the same claim on the world’s blue water resources, together responsible for 45 per cent of the global blue water footprint of crop production (Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2011a). Rice, wheat and maize are the three most popular staple foods in the world. In this chapter, we will focus on one of them: wheat. We will consider two of the most important appearances of wheat in our diets: bread and pasta. Wheat is believed to originate in Southwest Asia and the most likely site of its first domestication is near Diyarbakir in Turkey (Dubcovsky and Dvorak, 2007). Nowadays, wheat is grown all over the world. Over 90 per cent of the global wheat production is common wheat or bread wheat (Triticum aestivum aestivum), while durum wheat (Triticum turgidum durum) accounts for an estimated 5 per cent (Dixon et al., 2009). Bread wheat is mainly used for bread, noodles, cookies, cakes and breakfast cereals. Durum wheat has a very hard grain and is unsuitable for making bread; it is used mostly to produce semolina, pasta, gnocchi and cracked wheat products such as couscous or bulgur. Based on the growing period, wheat can be subdivided into spring and winter wheat. As a starter, I will present the global water footprint of wheat production. We will see in which places the water footprint of wheat is relatively small and where relatively large, in terms of litres/kg. In addition, we will see in which regions the water footprint of wheat is largest in total terms, which depends on the water footprint per unit of production, but also on how much wheat is being produced.
I will zoom in on a few particular production regions: the Midwest of the USA and the Ganges and Indus Basins. After this, we will consider international virtual water flows related to trade in wheat products. The analysis of trade enables us to take the consumer perspective and trace the spatial spreading of the water footprint of wheat consumption per country. In many countries, the water footprint of wheat consumption lies substantially outside the country, which means that consumers rely on water resources elsewhere. In the long run, unsustainable water use in the export regions may thus impact on the supply of wheat in the importing countries. In the last part of this chapter, I will home in on wheat consumption in Italy, one of the main wheat consuming countries in the world, with a focus on the water footprint of pasta. The chapter is concluded with a reflection on the idea of setting a benchmark for the water footprint of wheat to provide an incentive for improvement in the areas where the water footprint of wheat production exceeds the benchmark.
