Estimating Virtual Water Trade in Crops for Saudi Arabia

Yosef Alamri^1, and Michael Reed²

¹Department of Agricultural Economics, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

²Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA

Cite this paper:
Yosef Alamri and Michael Reed. Estimating Virtual Water Trade in Crops for Saudi Arabia. American Journal of Water Resources. 2019; 7(1):16-22. doi: 10.12691/ajwr-7-1-3

Abstract

Using the concept of virtual water introduced by Allan 1994 and developed by Hoekstra and Hung (2002), we estimate virtual water trade for 20 crops of Saudi Arabia during 2000-2016. Our result shows the average virtual water trade was 12.6 billion m³/year. Saudi had net virtual water imports, with the most significant virtual water import for cereals & alfalfa and vegetable; and there is a virtual water export of fruit. Saudi virtual water trade reduced pressure on water resources by 54%. Distance plays a role in Saudi virtual water export; we found that more than 90% of exports go to neighboring countries, including 45% to GCC countries. On the other hand, more than 40% of virtual water imports came from Asia.

Keywords:
virtual water import export Saudi Arabia crops

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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