Water fingerprint of animal products in Libya and efficiency of water use

Abstract

Water fingerprint of animal products in Libya and efficiency of water use

Water foot print (WFP) is a new indicator used to determine precisely the amount of fresh water required for country per capita utilization as well as for crop animal or industrial products starting from cradle to grave. It includes the calculation of 3 types of water:  blue, green and grey. Virtual water is the embedded water that was used to produce the products in the exporting country and refers to world trade between countries; it results in a positive water balance for the importing countries and a negative to the exported. Usually, countries deficient in water resources depend on virtual water trade. Globally, it was reported that the water footprint of animal products is largely greater than crop and vegetable products as M³/ Ton: beef meat 15400, sheep meat 10400, goat meat 5500, broilers 4300, eggs 3330, milk 1000, cheese, butter and ghee 8308. For plant products: wheat 1692, barely 3118, corn 1390, oats 2301, peanuts 3359, soy beans 2077 , sorghum 1107, onions 349, potatoes 421, tomatoes 235 and legumes 4055 . It was also found that the water footprint for production of a unit gram of protein and a unit of calorie was higher for animal products than those for cereals vegetables and legumes. In Libya, water footprints for some plant and crop cereals and forages were recently investigated but no information is available for animal products. Determining WFP for animal products will help increasing benefits of better utilizing fresh water in animal and plant productions. Efforts can be afforded to: 1. Use other underground waters as sulfur water to meet livestock requirement under range conditions.  2. Replace crop products to get similar requirements of protein and energy instead of animal sources. 3. Import frozen and/or cold meat from countries rich in water sources to help keep positive water balance internally. 4. Encourage producing strategic exportable crops with low requirement of water as forage crops, cereals, peanuts, rice and vegetables. 5. Encourage consumer habits to replace their animal diets with crops or vegetables having similar nutritive values. 6. Range reclamation and improve varieties of range plants adapted to scarcity of water.7. Improve performance of animal species through extensive genetic، physiological selection to attain higher feed conversion ratio with feeds at lower water requirements.  use of new biotechnology techniques such as Nanotechnology to improve diet quality, deliver minor feed particles and drugs (Drug delivery) directly to cells without being subjected to rumen fermentation.

Key words: water foot print, virtual water, animal products, crop products, nanotechnology.