Strategies for improving water use efficiency of livestock production in rain-fed systems

Abstract

Livestock production is a major consumer of fresh water, and the influence of livestock production on global fresh water resources is increasing because of the growing demand for livestock products. Increasing water use efficiency of livestock production, therefore, can contribute to the overall water use efficiency of agriculture. Previous studies have reported significant variation in livestock water productivity (LWP) within and among farming systems. Underlying causes of this variation in LWP require further investigation. The objective of this paper was to identify the factors that explain the variation in LWP within and among farming systems in Ethiopia. We quantified LWP for various farms in mixed-crop livestock systems and explored the effect of household demographic characteristics and farm assets on LWP using ANOVA and multilevel mixed-effect linear regression. We focused on water used to cultivate feeds on privately owned agricultural lands. There was a difference in LWP among farming systems and wealth categories. Better-off households followed by medium households had the highest LWP, whereas poor households had the lowest LWP. The variation in LWP among wealth categories could be explained by the differences in the ownership of livestock and availability of family labor. Regression results showed that the age of the household head, the size of the livestock holding and availability of family labor affected LWP positively. The results suggest that water use efficiency could be improved by alleviating resource constraints such as access to farm labor and livestock assets, oxen in particular.Keywords: mixed-crop livestock systems, livestock feed, water use efficiency, livestock water productivity ImplicationsLivestock production is one of the major consumers of fresh water, and the influence of livestock production on water resources is increasing because of the growing demand for livestock products. The results suggest that water use efficiency could be improved by alleviating resource constraints such as access to farm labor and livestock assets, oxen in particular. The findings of this research help in making decisions about where to invest scarce resources in order to improve water use efficiency in livestock production under rain-fed conditions.

BOARD-INVITED REVIEW: Quantifying water use in ruminant production1

“…This term is sometimes used interchangeably with water use efficiency (Kebebe et al, 2015). Over the past decade, this approach has been used to assess the water efficiency of production systems in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where ruminants are kept for multiple purposes, and services such as milk, meat, fiber, draft, and income generation (Gebreselassie et al, 2009;Peden et al, 2009;Descheemaeker et al, 2010;Kebebe et al, 2015). Productivity estimates can be expressed from a physical perspective as the ratio of livestock output to the amount of water consumed or on economic terms as the monetary value derived per unit of water used (Sharma et al, 2015).…”

“…Both precipitation and applied irrigation water that is not consumed is assumed to be available for other downstream uses (Sharma et al, 2015). In the context of rain-fed production systems, LWP is a measure of the ability of the production system to convert available rainwater into beneficial outputs and services (Kebebe et al, 2015).…”

An Analysis of Waste Heat Recovery from Wastewater on Livestock and Agriculture Farms

“…The assessment of the energy and financial effects of using liquid manure heat-recovery systems first required determining the value of water consumption. For this purpose, based on the information contained in the literature [35,36,38,[42][43][44] and using calculation Formulas (1) and (2), hydraulic parameters for individual variants can be determined.…”

Rainfall Data Modeling in Simalungun Regency Using the Arima Box-Jenkins Method

“…The rainfall is one millimeter (1 mm), meaning that it is in an area of one square meter on a flat place where one millimeter of water is collected. The amount of rainfall is very important in determining the yield of crop cultivation [2] [3]. Increased rainfall in an area creates the potential for flooding.…”