Benchmarking consumptive water use of bovine milk production systems for 60 geographical regions: An implication for Global Food Security

The results have shown the CWU/kg ECM ranged between 739 L on the Danish farm to 5622 l on the Ugandan farm with a global average of 1833 L. When looking at averages per region, the CWU was lowest in Europe (913 L) and highest in Africa (3384 L) with large intra- and inter-regional differences. Compared with grazing and intensive production system, low yielding cows on small-scale farms have the highest CWU/kg ECM. The key driver for variation in CWU/kg ECM is feed, accounting for 94-99% of the total CWU. Increasing milk productivity might be one of the promising ways to reduce CWU/kg ECM. However, this might also lead to the negative impact into water supply systems if this increase is dependent on land irrigation in water scarce areas. The findings of this study showed the need to address the location of the farm, the feed quality, feeding system and milk production intensity simultaneously when aiming at efficient water resource management which would help to contribute food production and livelihood security of dairy farmers worldwide.