Water and Food in Africa

Week 6: The Virtual Water Nexus: Misleading Metaphor? Last week’s blog post introduced virtual water, the concept capturing the amount of water required to produce a product, or the volume of water integrated into our society but not in the form of water. In the blog a discussion was started about virtual water trade and how water stressed nations can reduce their water usage by being tactical with imports and exports ( Lillywhite, 2010 ). Essentially virtual water trade is about importing products that have large volumes of integrated or virtual water and exporting products that have low virtual water. Whilst the discussion was opened last week, it certainly wasn’t finished. This week I want to more critically analyse the concept of virtual water and the trade of it. I will specifically focus on the impact of the concept on agriculture in Africa. Whilst the blog will take a critical focus, it is important to note that there are multiple benefits of the concept

Virtual Water: An Introduction This week, leaving ground water behind and coming out of the earth, I want to focus on a concept that captures the hidden water integrated into our lives, not necessarily in forms we might expect. This is the concept of virtual water. For a more succinct definition: Virtual water is the amount of water required to produce a product, from start to finish and is a mainly neglected and hidden component of production ( Lillywhite, 2010 ). The concept was first developed as a way of understanding how the volume of water embedded into food and trade of clothing is vastly greater than the volume of water we drink. Virtual water creates the idea of a water footprint, similar to that of an ecological footprint, making the consumer focus on the production chain as well as the final product ( VirtualWater, 2019 ). To put the concept into perspective; the average person drinks around 900 to 1000 litres of water per year, the simple avera

GWI: Focusing in on Morocco I have just come back from a week in Morocco, during which I drove 4 hours across the country. I was amazed at the stark contrast in landscape from what I am used to in the UK, especially from where I live in the Cotswolds. As a result of this trip, I have decided to focus this week’s blog specifically on Morocco. I will be focusing on some of the topics that have been discussed in the past two blogs, linking them to explicit examples. Morocco is situated on the north west coast of Africa, just a short ferry away from the south end of Mainland Europe. It is the 10 th most developed country in Africa with an HDI comparable to Iraq and India ( United Nations HDI Reports, 2017 ). 22.1% of the land in Morocco is arable (excluding the Western Sahara), 43% of arable land is devoted to cereals, 7% to plantation crops and 42% was fallow ( Nations Encyclopaedia ). Fallow farmland is ploughed and harrowed but left for a period without being sown in order to