Water-food-energy nexus : optimal use of water and energy for crop production

الملخص EN

Water, food, energy are inextricably connected.

As the largest user of water agriculture accounts for about 70% of the total water withdrawals globally.

Food production and supply also consume about 30% of total global energy.

Given the water-food-energy interconnections, integrated planning, policy and management are required for the food production system where the nexus approach can be applied.

The current study presents a method for applying the water-food-energy nexus approach to optimize water and energy use for food crop production.

A water-food-energy nexus index was used as an objective function, and its derivation was explained.

A linear optimization approach is used to maximize the water-food-energy nexus index.

This leads to a multi-objective optimization approach which proposes an optimal cropping pattern to save water and energy and increase the agricultural net return.

A case study from Egypt was applied to illustrate the benefits of the proposed method.