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U.S. Dairy Water Footprint in Context
Dairy production in the US at the national scale is a distributed production system that entails great geographic diversity with respect to inputs and outputs. Milk therefore represents an interesting case study to develop and test spatialized life cycle approaches for both inventory and impact assessment.
The study is to be used by the U.S. dairy industry to create a baseline of water footprint, helping that industry and its constituent milk producers to identify areas to target for improvement, explore the changes in impact associated with new management scenarios, and document those improvements.
The result showed that water stress is 146 liters in competition per kg milk consumed and 121 liter in competition per kg milk at farm gate (water consumption is 225 liters per kg milk consumed and 181 liters of water consumed per kg milk at farm gate).
Keywords: water footprint, spatialization, milk