Gross Domestic Product and water footprint of agribusiness: comparative between countries

Abstract

The objective of this study is to measure the countries' agribusiness in terms of income (Gross Domestic Product - GDP) and water (water footprint), in addition to estimating a sustainability indicator (water per unit of income). The methodology is based on the input-output matrix and was applied to 189 countries with a focus on the twenty largest economies (GDP) in 2015. The GDP of world agribusiness was US$12.3 trillion and the water footprint of 151 trillion cubic meters, the values represented respectively 18% and 97.5% of the total production system. The share of agribusiness income in the total productive system of the countries ranged from 4% to 61%. The highest agribusiness GDP figures were obtained for China (US$ 2.5 trillion), the United States (US$ 1.4 trillion), India (US$ 0.67 trillion), Japan (US$ 0.5 trillion) and Brazil (US$ 0.43 trillion). The environmental cost of agribusiness measured in cubic meters of water per thousand dollars of income generation (m³/US$) ranged from less than one hundred cubic meters for every thousand dollars of income generated to more than 200 thousand, which indicates that there is the possibility of increasing the efficiency of water use and sustainability through the development of new technologies.

Keywords:
water; water footprint; agribusiness; sustainability; input-output