Suggestions for virtual water

trade in global size based on the

irrigation demand and water
supply

Yuhang Zhang
6858570
Utrecht University
Water Science and Management

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Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Method
2.1 Irrigation water requirement
2.1.1 Crop area in different countries
2.1.2 Irrigation efficiencies
2.1.3 Crop patterns and transpiration
2.1.4 Growing season
2.1.5 Calculation of annual water demand for a country
2.1.6 Climate input
2.2 Availability
2.3 The possibility of outport and import virtual water
3. Result
4. Discussion
4.1 The suggestions for virtual water trade
4.2 The difference between previous research and this research and the potential reasons
4.3 Future research suggestion
5. Conclusion

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1. Introduction:

Water scarcity has already been a severe problem in the world. According to Mekonnen and
Hoekstra (2016), there were 4 billion people who would have problems with water scarcity
and about 1 billion people were threatened by water scarcity the whole year. This situation is
far enough to meet the SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) 6, which is emphasizing the
importance that the water right is one of the basic human rights to survive and develop
(Ortigara, et al., 2018).

An important reason causing the water scarcity is the requirement of irrigation (Mekonnen
and Hoekstra, 2016). Almost 90% of the water in the worldwide is consumed by irrigation
activities. Meanwhile, 67% of global water withdrawal are also caused by irrigation (Do¨ ll and
Siebert, 2002). Meanwhile, with the situation of water scarcity and water demand of irrigation,
a lot of regions put their attention on the unrenewable groundwater resources. However, the
over pumping of groundwater will also cause a series problem like sinking ground and
groundwater withdrawal (Wada, et al., 2010). Therefore, compared with the limited water
resources, a better sharing of the freshwater resources is considered as the key method to
solve the water scarcity (Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2016).

One of the potential methods to solve the water scarcity problem caused by irrigation might
be the virtual water trade. “Virtual water” means the water that is required during the process
of a commodity production. The key point for the virtual water trade is that, if a country lacks
water, it can import more crops that require more water, like bananas or rice, and plant some
crops that now require so much water, like grapes or olives. Meanwhile, the country with
more freshwater resources can do the things in a counter way. Through this method, the
water resource will be traded as a commercial commodity and the problem about the
unbalance between irrigation water needs and water supply will also be solved (Hoekstra and
Hung, 2004). Hoekstra and Hung (2004) have already done a good evaluation about the virtual
flow based on the irrigation requirement. However, in their assumption, they did not consider
whether the water supply would be sufficient to meet the irrigation but consider from the
aspect about crop yields. The pressure of irrigation water needs is not only connected with
irrigation water needs, but also connected with the water in soils and water from renewable
surface water (Sibert and Döll, 2010). Therefore, it is worthy considering the potential
opportunity about virtual water trades from global countries level from irrigation water needs
and water supply aspects.

The objective of this article is trying to analyze the opportunity of virtual water trade in
different countries. This analysis will be based on the comparison between irrigation water
demand and the renewable water supply of each country. Therefore, the research questions
will be 1. What is the irrigation water needed in each country? 2. What is the renewable water
supply in each country?

This article will first introduce the method for irrigation water requirement calculation and
the method for collecting renewable water sources. Then, in the result part, the comparison
between these two indicators of each country will be shown. In the discussion part, the

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suggestions about the virtual water trade will be offered, and the limitation about this article
will also be mentioned.

2. Method:

2.1 Irrigation water requirement

To calculate the requirement of groundwater in irrigation, it is necessary to know the net

irrigation water requirement first. In this paper, the method described by Do¨ ll and Siebert
(2002) will be followed to model the irrigation water requirement worldwide but with some
change since the purpose of this article is to giving suggestions for virtual water trade,
therefore the water requirement by individual countries will be more useful compared with
Digimap. The Python program will be used to make calculations and the data will be stored
into a dictionary to be used to calculate the water requirement for irrigation. Meanwhile, the
method from Do¨ ll and Sibert (2002) divides the crop patterns simply into two types, rice and
non-rice, which is not enough for the global size since the variation of crops is quite big among
countries. Some countries may rely on wheat or other types of crops instead of rice, but the
water need of wheat is different to rice. As a result, a different way to consider the growing
season will be discussed. There are steps to calculate the water requirement. First, the data
about crop areas in different countries will be collected. Second, the irrigation efficiencies and
the water requirement for different types will be collected. Third, collecting the growing
seasons information. Fourth, with growing seasons, irrigation efficiencies, crop areas and crop
patterns, the irrigation requirement can be calculated. Last, the climate input, especially the
effective precipitation, will be considered to see what is the net irrigation water demand.

2.1.1 Crop area in different countries

The information about the area of irrigation could be collected from a database called
AQUASTAT from FAO. This database includes the data of different type of crops area in
different months in 170 countries (FAO, 2020). One thing should be pointed out that, the data
of China, USA and India are separated by different regions, and the data from different regions
in a country have been summed up as a country to compare with other countries.

2.1.2 Irrigation efficiencies

Irrigation efficiency represents how much water is absorbed by crops compared with the
water used for irrigation. This indicator is influenced significantly by soil types and irrigation
methods (Brouwer, et al., 1989). The irrigation efficiencies in different countries' data is from
Do¨ ll and Siebert (2002), which can be seen in table 1. There are 19 regions in the world
covered in this table. The 170 countries covered by AQUASTAT database will be categorized
into different regions to get their efficiency.

Table 1. Estimated Irrigation Water Use Efficiencies in worldwide (Do¨ ll and Siebert, 2002).
World Region Irrigation Efficiency
Canada 0.7
United States 0.6
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 Central America 0.45
South America 0.45
Northern Africa 0.7
Western Africa 0.45
Eastern Africa 0.55
Southern Africa 0.55
OECD Europe North 0.5
OECD Europe South 0.6
Eastern Europe 0.5
Baltic States, Belarus 0.6
Middle East 0.6
South Asia 0.35
East Asia 0.35
South East Asia 0.4
Oceania 0.7
Japan 0.35

2.1.3 Crop patterns and transpiration

The water needed by crops during growing seasons is also the transpiration from crops. Even
for the same crop, the transpiration will be different in different climate situations. For
example, in hot climates, the crops will require more water to support its growth than in the
cooler climate. Such a difference will be estimated by Crop water requirement for standard
grass. The daily grass water requirement can be seen in table 2.

Table 2. Average daily water requirement of standard grass (unit, mm/d). Data source:
Brouwer and Heibloem, 1986.
Climate zone Temperature
Less than 15℃ 15-25℃ >25℃
Desert/arid 4-6 7-8 9-10
Semi arid 4-5 6-7 8-9
Sub-humid 3-4 5-6 7-8
Humid 1-2 3-4 5-6

It can be seen that, in order to get this indicator, the country temperature and precipitation
should be known. Optimally, the data should be daily temperature and daily precipitation.
However, in this assignment, the average annual temperature (Mitchell, et al., 2004) and
average annual precipitation (FAO, 2016) will be used to simplify the calculation because the
daily data is hard to find.

In addition, the crop water needs are also influenced by crop patterns, and such an impact
will be evaluated by the crop coefficient, which means the ratio between crop pattern
requirement and standard grass. The crop coefficient data can be found from Brouwer and
Heibloem (1986), which is shown in table 3. This table does not include all the types of crops.

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In this assignment, the crop coefficient of crop pattern that is not covered in this table will be
assumed as 1, which is exactly equal to the standard grass water need.

Table 3. The crop coefficient of different crop patterns. Data source: Brouwer and Heibloem,
1986.
0.7 0.9 1 1.1 1.2
Citrus Cucumber Carrots Barley Rice
Olives Radishes Crucifers Beans Sugarcane
grapes squash Lettuce Maize Banana
Melons Flax Nuts
Onions Small grains
Peanuts Cotton
Peppers Tomato
Spinach Eggplant
Tea Lentils
Grass Millet
Cacao Oats
Coffee Peas
Cultivated nuts Potatoes
Fruit trees Safflower
Sorghum
Soybeans
Sugarbeet
Sunflower
Tobacco
wheat

According to Brouwer and Heibloem (1986), the water need for a certain crop pattern can be
described by the equation below.
𝐸𝑖,𝑑 = 𝐸𝑔,𝑑 × 𝑘𝑐,𝑖
Here, Ei,d is the water need (or transpiration by crop) for a certain crop pattern per day, Eg,d is
the water need for the standard grass in the certain climate condition per day, and kc,i is the
crop coefficient of the certain crop pattern.

2.1.4 Growing season

Crop does not grow all the year, and the water need will reach peak during the growing
seasons. However, like the temperature and precipitation, the exact data in detail are hard to
determine. In this assignment, the area data in the 1st step also offers the area of different
crops in different months. If there is no number, it means the water need is zero for that type
of crop since the area of that crop in that month is zero. Therefore, the annual water need for
the certain crop pattern will be the sum of daily water needed in that year. The equation (1)
can be seen below.

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 𝐸𝑖,𝑦 = ∑𝑛=12
𝑛=1 𝐸𝑖,𝑑 × 𝑑𝑛 × 𝐴𝑖,𝑛 (1)

Here, Ei,y means the annual water need for a certain crop pattern in the whole year. Ei,d is from
step 3, dn is the days in that month, and Ai,n is the area of that crop patterns in the certain
month. This equation is written based on the definition of each factor and without source
since growing season data are replaced by Ai,n.

2.1.5 Calculation of annual water demand for a country

With the Ei,y from 1.4, the next step is summing the different crops together and dividing by
irrigation efficiency to achieve the total water requirement for the country annually. The
equation can be seen below.
∑ 𝐸𝑖,𝑦
𝐸𝑇 = 𝐸𝑓𝑓𝑎
(2)

Here, ET means the total water requirement in that country, Ei,,y come from 1.4, Effa is the
country irrigation efficiency.

2.1.6 Climate input

However, the ET from the last section does not consider the effective rainfall, which is the
rainfall in soils and directly absorbed by crops. According to Do¨ ll and Siebert (2002), the net
irrigation requirement can be achieved from the equations below.

𝐼𝑛𝑒𝑡 = 𝐸𝑇 − 𝑃𝑒𝑓𝑓 If ET > Peff (3)

𝐼𝑛𝑒𝑡 = 0 If ET ≤ Peff (4)

In addition, the Peff can be calculated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture SoilConservation
Method (Smith, 1992, cited by Do¨ ll and Siebert, 2002).

𝑃𝑒𝑓𝑓 = 𝑃 × (4.17 − 0.2 × 𝑃)/4.17 For P < 8.3 mm/d (5)

𝑃𝑒𝑓𝑓 = 4.17 + 0.1 × 𝑃 For P≥ 8.3 mm/d (6)

Here, P means the daily precipitation. As mentioned above, in order to simplify the calculation,
the P here is replaced by annual precipitation over 365.

As a result, the Inet will be used as the total irrigation water needed in that country.

2.2 Availability of free water

In order to keep the water balance, the renewable surface water in that country will be
considered as the source of irrigation water. The data is from AQUASTAT (FAO, 2020), including
the country renewable surface water in volume.

2.3 The possibility of outport and import virtual water

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The renewable surface water and net irrigation water requirement will be compared to see
whether the renewable surface water is enough to support the irrigation.

3. Result:

10000

9000
BRAZIL

8000
renewable water source (10^9 m3)

7000

6000 RUSSIAN
FEDERATION
5000

4000
VIET NAM
3000 MEXICO
THAILAND
2000
IRAN (ISLAMIC
1000 REPUBLIC OF) PAKISTAN
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
UZBEKISTAN 3
EGYPTnet irrigation water requirement (10^9 m )

Figure 1. The result of renewable water sources and net irrigation water requirement. The
country under orange line, like Pakistan and Iran, means that their water source in whole
country cannot meet the requirement of irrigation.

The comparison between net irrigation water requirement and renewable water source has
been shown in figure 1. The orange line is a straight line with y = x, which is used to display the
water balance between supply and consumption. The countries under this line are suffering
from extreme water scarcity since their surface water resources in the whole country cannot
meet the requirement of irrigation. The countries over that line means the renewable surface
water is enough to support the irrigation requirement. Table 4 shows the list of countries
which lack water resources to support its irrigation requirement.

Table 4. The list of countries which are lack of water. Sorted by name. (unit, 10^9 m3)
Country Renewable water Irrigation need Difference
Algeria 10.15 22.89 -12.74
Cyprus 0.56 0.87 -0.31
Egypt 56 132.85 -76.85
Iran 105.8 184.25 -78.45
Israel 0.55 3.92 -3.36

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 Jordan 0.65 2.72 -2.07
Kuwait 0 0.25 -0.25
Libya 0.2 8.13 -7.93
Malta 5.0E-04 0.03 -0.03
Morocco 22 36.83 -14.83
Oman 1.05 2.98 -1.93
Pakistan 239.2 776.21 -537.01
Qatar 0 0.27 -0.27
Saudi Arabia 2.2 33.3 -31.1
Syrian Arab 12.63 22.23 -9.6
Republic
Tunisia 3.42 7.67 -4.25
Turkmenistan 24.36 56.84 -32.48
United Arab 0.15 11.89 -11.74
Emirates
Uzbekistan 42.07 59.40 -17.33
Yemen 2 15.01 -13.01

4. Discussion:

4.1 The suggestions for virtual water trade

For those countries under the orange lines, the emergency actions are reducing the stress on
their own agricultural waters. Since their own renewable water source is not enough to
support their irrigated area, it is possible that this country has already used lots of
unrenewable water sources, like groundwater, to meet their requirement. However, using
those water may cause problems like sinking ground. Therefore, it is urgent to reduce the
irrigation requirement. One method to reduce the stress might be importing virtual water to
meet the population requirement for foods.

Meanwhile, for those countries which are approaching the orange line, there is also a problem
with water scarcity. Industry and population also required water. For example, the
Netherlands consumed 9.63 billion m3 water in industry in 2005 which was even more than
its irrigation requirement (Ritchie, 2017). Those countries are relying on much of their
available water resources, and it might influence its economic structure and human rights.
Therefore, it would be wise to consider virtual water import to optimize the water
consumption structure for those countries which are close to the y = x line.

For those countries with much more water resources compared to irrigation water needs, for
example, Brazil, it can be suggested that more water requiring crops like rice and bananas can
be planted.

4.2 The difference between previous research and this research and the potential reasons

The suggestion based on water balance is different to the previous study about virtual water
trade. For example, Hoekstra and Hung’s report (2005) showed that the biggest virtual water
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import countries are Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, China and Indonesia. In
addition, the largest export countries are the United States, Canada, Thailand, Argentina and
India. However, the most water-short countries are not in this list, and the countries with the
largest rich water sources are not here, too (apart from Canada). There should be some
reasons to explain such a difference.

The first possible reason is the difference of precipitation between seasons. A lot of countries
are controlled by monsoon climate, especially for countries in eastern Asia like Japan, the
Republic of Korea, China and Indonesia. This assignment simply uses the annual precipitation
to describe the effective precipitation for irrigation. However, in most real situations, the
effective precipitation will be less in the dry season because there is not enough rainfall. This
factor might decrease the irrigation water requirement in this assignment.

The second possible reason is the difference between renewable water resources and the
water that can be really used. One example is the Mekong River. The water resources in the
Mekong River are shared with a lot of countries, so the water that can be really used is not
just dependent on the renewable water but also the coordinators between nearby countries.
Another example is the safe yield (Dingman, 2002). The ecosystem needs enough yield to keep
in the health situation. Therefore, there will be a difference between renewable water
resources and the water can be used for irrigation.

Last possible reason is the demand for crops in different countries. For example, China has
the largest population among the world, that also means that it has the largest demand for
food which leads to the reason why it became one of the largest irrigation import countries
(Hoekstra and Hung, 2005). Since the demand factor is not considered in this assignment, the
driver to import crops will be limited to only water resource factor, which is the key point of
this assignment.

4.3 Future research suggestion

The most helpful thing to optimize this study in future will be collecting the climate data in
monthly and the method to determine the available amount of surface water, and the reasons
have been mentioned in the last section. To do the collecting work, more database searching
work should be done. And for the available amount of surface water method, the literature
review about evaluation of agricultural withdrawal should be done. The demand factor is not
the most important element to look at in future research because there is already some
literature analyzing the relationship between demands and virtual water trades (Hoekstra and
Huang, 2005), and the topic of this assignment is analyzing the virtual water trades based on
irrigation water balance.

5. Conclusion

This assignment first calculates the irrigation water needed for each country and compares
the calculation result with the renewable water resources for each country, and apply this
comparison as the water balance method to analyze which country is most urgent for virtual
water import. The result shows that countries like Pakistan, Egypt et al. are most water short.
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Reference:
Brouwer, C., & Heibloem, M. (1986). Irrigation water management: irrigation water needs. Training
manual, 3.
Brouwer, C., Prins, K., & Heibloem, M. (1989). Irrigation water management: irrigation scheduling.
Training manual, 4.
Dingman, S. L. (2002). Physical hydrology.
FAO. (2016). AQUASTAT. Main Database, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Website accessed on [29/10/2020 3:24]
FAO. (2020). AQUASTAT. Irrigated crop calendars. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO). Website accessed on [2020/10/22]
Hannah Ritchie (2017). Water Use and Stress. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from:
'https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress' [Online Resource] Website accessed on [29/10/2020]
Hoekstra, A. Y., & Hung, P. Q. (2005). Globalisation of water resources: international virtual water flows
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Siebert, S., & Döll, P. (2010). Quantifying blue and green virtual water contents in global crop production
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