Most of the human appropriation of freshwater resources is for agriculture. Water availability is a major constraint to mankind's ability to produce food. The notion of virtual water content (VWC), also known as crop water footprint, provides an effective tool to investigate the linkage between food and water resources as a function of climate, soil, and agricultural practices. The spatial variability in the virtual water content of crops is here explored, disentangling its dependency on climate and crop yields and assessing the sensitivity of VWC estimates to parameter variability and uncertainty. Here we calculate the virtual water content of four staple crops (i.e., wheat, rice, maize, and soybean) for the entire world developing a high‐resolution (5 × 5 arc min) model, and we evaluate the VWC sensitivity to input parameters. We find that food production almost entirely depends on green water (>90%), but, when applied, irrigation makes crop production more water efficient, thus requiring less water. The spatial variability of the VWC is mostly controlled by the spatial patterns of crop yields with an average correlation coefficient of 0.83. The results of the sensitivity analysis show that wheat is most sensitive to the length of the growing period, rice to reference evapotranspiration, maize and soybean to the crop planting date. The VWC sensitivity varies not only among crops, but also across the harvested areas of the world, even at the subnational scale.

The increasing global demand for farmland products is placing unprecedented pressure on the global agricultural system and its water resources. Many regions of the world, that are affected by a chronic water scarcity relative to their population, strongly depend on the import of agricultural commodities and associated embodied (or virtual) water. The globalization of water through virtual water trade (VWT) is leading to a displacement of water use and a disconnection between human populations and the water resources they rely on. Despite the recognized importance of these phenomena in reshaping the patterns of water dependence through teleconnections between consumers and producers, their effect on global and regional water resources has just started to be quantified. This review investigates the global spatiotemporal dynamics, drivers, and impacts of VWT through an integrated analysis of surface water, groundwater, and root-zone soil moisture consumption for agricultural production; it evaluates how virtual water flows compare to the major 'physical water fluxes' in the Earth System; and provides a new reconceptualization of the hydrologic cycle to account also for the role of water redistribution by the hidden 'virtual water cycle'.

This paper introduces a modeling framework for the analysis of real and virtual water flows at national scale. The framework has two components: (1) a national water model that simulates agricultural, industrial and municipal water uses, and available water and land resources; and (2) an international virtual water trade model that captures national virtual water exports and imports related to trade in crops and animal products. This National Water, Food & Trade (NWFT) modeling framework is applied to Egypt, a water-poor country and the world's largest importer of wheat. Egypt's food and water gaps and the country's food (virtual water) imports are estimated over a baseline period (1986–2013) and projected up to 2050 based on four scenarios. Egypt's food and water gaps are growing rapidly as a result of steep population growth and limited water resources. The NWFT modeling framework shows the nexus of the population dynamics, water uses for different sectors, and their compounding effects on Egypt's food gap and water self-sufficiency. The sensitivity analysis reveals that for solving Egypt's water and food problem non-water-based solutions like educational, health, and awareness programs aimed at lowering population growth will be an essential addition to the traditional water resources development solution. Both the national and the global models project similar trends of Egypt's food gap. The NWFT modeling framework can be easily adapted to other nations and regions.

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