Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Since the consumption of the livestock products increased for the past 10 years in Korea, the water use for live animals has become more important in terms of water savings. Therefore, the index connecting water use and livestock products consumption should be required for sustainable water management, and water footprint concept could be suggested as the index. The aim of this study is to estimate the water footprint for livestock products; beef cattle, swine, and broiler chicken. The water footprint for livestock products is divided into direct and indirect water. The direct water includes the drinking and servicing water, and the indirect water includes the water for the cultivation of feed crops. The water footprint of beef cattle was calculated to 17,023.1 ㎥/ton, and direct water was 91.2 ㎥/ton, and indirect water was 16,931.9 ㎥/ton. The water footprint of swine was calculated to 4,235.8 ㎥/ton, and direct water was 129.7 ㎥/ton, and indirect water was 4,106.0 ㎥/ton. The water footprint of broiler chicken was calculated to 2,427.7 ㎥/ton, and direct water was 7.6 ㎥/ton, and indirect water was 2,420.1 ㎥/ton. Also, we compared the water footprint to water demand of water vision 2020 which is the main report for national water management. The water vision 2020 reported only direct water for live animal, but the water footprint includes the direct and indirect water. Therefore, the water footprint could be applied to various fields relating water and food.