An Economic Study of The Water Footprint and Virtual Water Trade of the Most Important Grain Crops in Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Agricultural Economics Branch, Agricultural Economics Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Kafr El-Sheikh University,Egypt

2 Agricultural Economics Research Institute - Agricultural Research Center, Egypt

Abstract

In view of the current situation and the study of the water crisis experienced by Egypt it is important to develop new concepts to rationalize water consumption, including the concept of water footprint to estimate the volume of water needed to produce the various commodities consumed by humans, Cereal crops in Egypt, rice, maize and wheat during the period (2000-2016), the research was based on secondary data, and the use of both descriptive and quantitative economic analysis methods As long as the general time trend equations, the water footprint estimation model and its indicators,The most important results were a decrease in the per capita water footprint of the rice crop by about 2%, and its per capita growth increased by about 1.7% during the study period, reflecting the positive impact of the agricultural irrigation policy of rice crop, while showing the increase of per capita water footprint of maize and a decrease in The per capita by about 2.68% and the per capita share of wheat increased by 4.2% and the per capita growth increased non significantly, reflecting a shortage of maize and wheat irrigation policy, The research recommends the need to calculate the water footprint of various crops, and recommends the need to address the shortcomings agricultural irrigation policy for maize and wheat crops, such as rice crop.

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