Issues and Measures of Efficient and Sustainable Use of Water Resources in Livestock Production with Emphasis on Livestock Water Productivity

Under water scarcity conditions livestock production, because of its high content virtual water, has been one of the challenging issues in the scientific literature in this regard.A few scientific references believe that forage crops production, because of their high water requirements, make pressure on water resources of scarce-water countries.Other references are on this idea that there is to somehow exaggeration on the high water requirements of the livestock productions.Therefore, in most cases the livestock water productivity(LWP), especially when the protein content and nutritional values of livestock products and other services are considered, is comparable with the water productivity(WP) of agricultural crops. However, similar to the issues of improvement of WP in agriculture, the key point of livestock production from limited water resources is the improvement of LWP.LWP is defined as the ratio of the net benefit obtained from livestock products and other services to the water used for such productions and services. Livestock water productivity does not seek to maximise the number of livestock or the production of animal products and services. Rather, it opens opportunities to produce the same benefits with fewer animals and less demand for agricultural water. This paper reviews different views on livestock production under water scarcity circumstances considering WP and LWP improvement issues.It then deals with the definition and concepts of LWP and its methods of estimation and calculations.The paper provides some apparent values of LWP measured in different studies and elaborates the issues, difficulties, and sources of errors in this regard. Livestock production could be indicative of an efficient or inefficient use of water resources depending to the method of estimates,calculation approach, and or selected scale. Paper concludes that for the required links between livestock production and use of water resources, especially in the mixed livestock-farming systems and in basin-scale are not established well.