Water Use for Food Purposes

Abstract

This chapter ponders how the agricultural sector uses water for food in Mexico. It is based on a review of the geographic, social, and political conditions under which the Mexican countryside produces, emphasizing its heterogeneity and the presence of an external water footprint due to the importation of agricultural products, cereals are the products with a higher content of virtual water imported by Mexico, and although this, on the one hand, saves water, reduces soil loss and water pollution because of a lower use of agrochemicals; on the other hand, food security and sovereignty are undermined. Farming and livestock raising activities are the main users of the water and soil resources, and are the most important causes for their deterioration; altogether, these sectors use 78 % of extracted water: 76 % by agriculture and 2 % for the cattle industry. Notwithstanding the importance of areas on irrigation, the production of basic foods in Mexico, corn, beans, and wheat, depends largely on the production from rain-fed zones. Only eight states were found to contribute to the national farming and ranching producing a higher water percentage than the amount they have in concession for agricultural use, and the rest of the federative entities take hold of a higher percentage of the resource in relation to what they provide in agricultural product.