A study on agriculture water sustainability using the water footprint

As the population increase, the demand of rice production is also increasing, especially in south East Asia. Rice consumed large amount of water. Irrigation projects are proposed to meet water demand in the production of rice. The sustainability of water resource might be in critical situation. Water footprint (WF) is an indicator that shows the impact of water usage on water resource. Therefore, the aim of this study is to make an assessment of the water footprint related to the production of rice crop. Four paddy field regions in Yogyakarta Province were utilized as case study. And, the determination of actual water use in rice crop production was performed using CROPWAT 8.0 program. The result shows the increasing trends of WF in three regions out of four regions. In 2018, these regions might experience inefficiency in its agricultural practices which led to lower production yield, shown by WF of around 40% higher compare to previous years. However, one region performed better than the others, with lower WF, which indicated higher efficiency in agriculture water usage. Further study should be performed with longer time range to understand the influence of climate and various agricultural practices.