We present a network model of interstate food trade and report comprehensive estimates of embodied irrigation energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in virtual water trade for the United States (U.S.). We consider trade of 29 food commodities including 14 grains and livestock products between 51 states. A total of 643 million tons of food with a corresponding 322 billion m³ of virtual water, 584 billion MJ of embodied irrigation energy, and 42 billion kg CO₂-equivalent GHG emissions were traded across the U.S. in 2012. The estimated embodied GHG emissions in irrigation water are similar to CO₂ emissions from the U.S. cement industry, highlighting the importance of reducing environmental impacts of irrigation. While animal-based commodities represented 12% of food trade, they accounted for 38% of the embodied energy and GHG emissions from virtual irrigation water transfers due to the high irrigation embodied energy and emissions intensity of animal-based products. From a network perspective, the food trade network is a robust, well-connected network with the majority of states participating in food trade. When the magnitude of embodied energy and GHG emissions associated with virtual water are considered, a few key states emerge controlling high throughput in the network.

Water, energy, and food are essential for human well-being and for sustainable development. Water is required in almost all types of electricity generation and it is highly consumed in food production. Cities, industry, and crop production have increased their needs for water, energy and land resources, and at the same time, they are facing problems associated with the environmental degradation and, in some regions, resource scarcity. This paper proposes a multiobjective optimization model for the design of a water distribution network from a water–energy–food nexus point of view. Additionally, crop production and cost relationships are integrated to account for the water and energy requirements in the agricultural sector. The economic objective is the maximization of annual gross profit, which accounts for the water, energy and food production; the environmental objective establishes the minimization of overall greenhouse gas emissions, and the social objective is the maximization of the number of jobs. In this paper, because the objectives are opposites, a multistakeholder assessment is proposed in order to analyze and quantify the relationship of the water–energy–food nexus to assess synergies that improve the decision-making process. The mathematical model was applied to a case study located in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico, in which, a series of scenarios were solved to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed optimization approach. The results show strong trade-offs between the considered objectives as well as the quantification of the water–energy–food nexus.

Pressures from growing demands and shrinking supplies have reached a critical junction in major global resources, particularly water, energy, and food (WEF). Recognizing the complex interaction across those highly interconnected resources, the nexus concept evolved to boost efficiencies across all nexus pillars. Several modeling efforts tried to capture the complexity of this problem, but most attempts captured only one or two nexus pillars, remained localized to fixed case-studies or applications, or used simulations to assess pre-defined scenarios rather than solving for optimum solutions under defined objective function and constraints. Here, we present an optimization model for water, energy, and food nexus resource management and allocation at a regional scale. The model was successfully validated using a hypothetical case study to test its efficiency under several resource availability scenarios and different policy targets. The results enhanced the understanding of the interlinkages among the nexus sectors by demonstrating the sensitivity of the WEF nexus to adopted strategies. For example, imposing food variety constraints changed water consumption by an order of magnitude and more than doubled energy requirements. Moreover, adopting renewable energy may cause increased demands for land, but can significantly cut CO₂ emissions. The model serves as an effective decision-making tool that enables policy makers to assess multiple WEF sources and recommends the optimum resource allocation under various policy, technology, and resource constraints.

Natural resources are consumed in food production, and food loss is consequently accompanied with a loss of resources as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study analyses food loss based on India-specific production data (for the year 2013) and reported food loss rates during production and post-harvest stages of major food crops and animal products in India. Further, the study evaluates the environmental impacts of food loss in terms of utilization of water, land resources and GHG emissions. The total food loss in harvest and post-harvest stages of the food supply chain for the selected food items amounted to 58.3 ± 2.22 million tonnes (Mt) in the year 2013 with the highest losses by mass in sugarcane and rice. The volume of water associated with the food losses was found to be 115 ± 4.15 billion m³, of which 105 ± 3.77 billion m³ was direct water use (blue + green) and 9.54 ± 0.38 billion m³ was indirect water use (grey). Wasted sugarcane and rice were found to be the largest contributors for water loss. Land footprint and carbon footprint associated with food loss were found to be 9.58 ± 0.4 million hectares (Mha) and 64.1 ± 3.8 Mt CO₂eq, respectively, with rice accounting for the largest impact in both. This highlights the immediate need for quantification and taking measures for minimization of losses across the food supply chains in India.

Biofuels for use in on-road transportation have been promoted in Thailand over the past decade to reduce dependence on imported fossil resources as well as possibly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This has led to an increase in production of biodiesel which is produced from palm oil. However, as palm oil is also used for food, it is important to take this into consideration as well. Also, oil palm cultivation is rather water-intensive. Hence, it is necessary to analyze the interlinkage between water, food, and energy to have a holistic understanding and prevent trade-offs when addressing one issue in isolation. The water-energy-food nexus for oil palm cultivation in Thailand has been conducted following two widely used methods, the Water-Food-Energy Nexus (WFEN) and Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus assessment method. The results are demonstrated as a single score, which is easier for suggesting a suitable area for oil palm plantation. The assessment indicates the southern region of Thailand is the most suitable for oil palm plantation. The recommendation is consistent with the suggestion of the government, based on land and climate suitability. However, this study considers more comprehensive aspects including various other environmental aspects. Oil palm cultivation mainly relates to the amount of freshwater consumption, leading to the increment of fuel consumption for pumping water. On the other hand, the effectiveness of fresh fruit bunch yield (for food and energy production) should be developed in the future. Besides, the results recommend the central region for the expansion of oil palm cultivation in the future because of the availability of a good irrigation infrastructure.

The United Nation Sustainable Development Goals emphasized to meet the global food security challenges by mechanized farming; access of clean water challenges by renewable freshwater withdrawals; clean energy issues determined by clean fuel and cleaner technologies; and combat climate change by limiting anthropogenic emissions of carbon, fossil fuel, and Greenhouse Gas emissions in the air. This study examined the aforementioned United Nation Sustainable Development Goals in the context of Pakistan by using a time series data from 1970 to 2016. The study employed Tapio’s elasticity of decoupling state to analyze the relationship between water-energy-food resources and carbon-fossil-greenhouse gas emissions in a given country context. The results of Tapio elasticity found that carbon-fossil-greenhouse gas emissions’ contamination in water-energy-food’s resources are quite visible that exhibit weak decoupling state, expensive negative decoupling state, and strong decoupling state in the different decade’s data, which substantiate the ecological cost in water-energy-food’s resources. The results emphasized the need to adopt different sustainable instruments in a way to limit carbon-fossil-greenhouse gas emissions in water-energy-food resources through cleaner production technologies, renewable energy mix, environmental certification, anti-dumping tariff duty, strict environmental regulations, etc. These instruments would be helpful to achieve environmental sustainability agenda for mutual exclusive global gains.

Food production consumes a large amount of water consumption and generates huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Quantitative study of impact food wastage imposing on water and greenhouse gas emissions contributes to public awareness that food wastage will further worsen the resource shortage and climate warming, reducing food wastage accordingly. This paper evaluates the impacts of food wastage in the consumption stage on water resources and the environment in China. The result indicates that in the year 2010, the wastage of major food in China was around 62818 M kg in the consumption link, accounting for 14.5% of the total food production, of which the plant food wastage takes up the majority. The loss of water resources (blue water plus green water) caused by food wastage is 60502 Mm³, more than 10% of the country's total water use. Food wastage has a serious impact on agricultural non-point source pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in a grey water footprint of 16292 Mm³ and 60.85 M ton of carbon emissions. Taking regional differences of food consumption into consideration, the proportion of water footprints and carbon emissions in the eastern and southern developed areas is relatively higher, while the plant food takes a relatively larger share in water footprints and carbon emissions in the western and central provinces. Reducing food waste is important to remove unnecessary burdens on the environment and natural resources. The optimization of resource utilization in the process of food production is conducive to effectively reduce water footprints and carbon emissions of food; healthy diets shall be popularized among citizens so that the animal food consumption which causes more water footprints and carbon emissions can be decreased, alleviating resource and environmental burdens through reduction of the wastage in food consumption.

This work presents a general mathematical programming model for satisfying water, energy, and food needs in isolated and low-income communities involving different process integration approaches. The problem consists in determining the optimal and sustainable configuration to satisfy the energy, water, and food demands of the inhabitants. Also, the use of waste-to-energy technologies is proposed to handle the municipal solid waste correctly and obtain valuated products from wastes to reduce the environmental impact. A multiobjective analysis is presented considering the consumption of fresh water, the greenhouse gas emissions, and the cost of the integrated system as objective functions. As a case study, the community with the lowest index of poverty and marginalization from the State of Guerrero in Mexico is presented. The results show that it is possible to satisfy the water, energy, and food needs in isolated communities accounting for integrated processes. Besides, it is possible to obtain trade-off solutions considering contradicting objectives.

In recent years, several global issues related to food waste, increasing CO2 emissions, water pollution, over-fertilization, deforestation, loss of arable land, food security, and energy storage have emerged. Climate change urgently needs to be addressed from an ecological and social perspective. Implementing new indoor urban vertical farming (IUVF) operations is one way to combat the above-mentioned issues as well as foodborne illnesses, scarcity of drinking water, and more crop failure due to infection from plant pathogens and insect pests. A promising production mode is plant factories (PFs), which are indoor plant production systems completely isolated from outside environment. This paper mainly focuses on the comprehensive review of scientific papers in order to analyse the different applications of urban farming (UF) based on three different dimensions: a) the manufacturing techniques and equipment used; b) the energy that these systems require, the distribution of energy, and ways to minimize the energy-related cost; and c) the technological innovations applied in order to optimize the cultivation possibilities of IUVF.

We present a network model of the United States (U.S.) interstate food transfers to analyze the trade dependency with respect to participating regions and embodied irrigation impacts from a food–energy–water (FEW) nexus perspective. To this end, we utilize systems analysis methods including the pointwise mutual information (PMI) measure to provide an indication of interdependencies by estimating probability of trade between states. PMI compares observed trade with a benchmark of what is statistically expected given the structure and flow in the network. This helps assess whether dependencies arising from empirically observed trade occur due to chance or preferential attachment. The implications of PMI values are demonstrated by using Texas as an example, the largest importer in the U.S. grain transfer network. We find that strong dependencies exist not only just with states (Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska) providing high volume of transfer to Texas but also with states that have comparatively lower trade (New Mexico). This is due to New Mexico’s reliance on Texas as an important revenue source compared to its other connections. For Texas, import interdependencies arise from geographical proximity to trade. As these states primarily rely on the commonly shared High Plains aquifer for irrigation, overreliance poses a risk for water shortage for food supply in Texas. PMI values also indicate the capacity to trade more (the states are less reliant on each other than expected), and therefore provide an indication of where the trade could be shifted to avoid groundwater scarcity. However, some of the identified states rely on GHG emission intensive fossil fuels such as diesel and gasoline for irrigation, highlighting a potential tradeoff between crop water footprint and switching to lower emissions pumping fuels.