Water footprint of food products worldwide

Certain food products use considerably more water in their production than others. Globally, an average of 5,605 liters of freshwater is needed to produce just one kilogram of cheese. Nut production is also water intensive, needing more than 4,000 liters to produce a kilogram.

Average freshwater withdrawals of food product worldwide as of 2018 (in liters per kilogram of food product)

Characteristic	Water withdrawls in liters per kilogram of food product
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Sources

Expert(s) (Poore, J & Nemecek, T); OWID Use Ask Statista Research Service

Release date

January 2020

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2018

Supplementary notes

*The source adds the following information:
"We derived data from a comprehensive meta-analysis, identifying 1530 studies for potential inclusion, which were supplemented with additional data received from 139 authors. Studies were assessed against 11 criteria designed to standardize methodology, resulting in 570 suitable studies with a median reference year of 2010. The data set covers ~38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products representing ~90% of global protein and calorie consumption'.

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