The water footprint of beef cattle in the amazon region, Brazil

Abstract

Food production and water scarcity, both in constant growth and intrinsically linked, are subjects of great relevance in current studies in several areas of knowledge. The impacts generated by the production of beef are at the center of major environmental debates, especially the consumption of water for the production and development of the livestock production chain. This research analyzed the use of water resources in the production of beef in the Amazon biome. The water footprint for beef cattle was of 13,074 L.kg-1 compared to a world average of 21,829 L.kg-1. Based on the data obtained it was possible to demonstrate that the presence and operationalization of this production chain in the Amazon is more efficient from the water point of view than in the other locations reported in the literature.

The Water Footprint of Primary and Secondary Processing of Beef from Different Cattle Breeds: A Value Fraction Allocation Model

“…Like Junior and Dziedzic [19] and Palhares et al [9], most of the existing literature reports the WF in terms of beef cattle on either per kilogram of a live animal or per kilogram of a carcass. Only some studies, like Chapagain and Hoekstra [10] and Mekonnen and Hoekstra [11], broke it down into products (carcass, beef bone-in, and boneless beef) and by-products (offal, leather, and semen).…”

“…This means that very little information exists on the contribution of the various links in the value chain to the WF of beef. More recent studies that focused on the WFs of livestock in beef production, beef cattle, and livestock products also did not break the WF down to product level or ignored the contribution of processing to the total WF [17][18][19][20]. Palhares et al [9] did indicate that the grey WF of the beef processing plant was included based on the total phosphorus concentration in the effluent but failed to report the findings of the processing WF separately in the article.…”