RT Journal Article
T1 Water-Energy-Food nexus index proposal as a sustainability criterion on dairy farms
A1 Entrena-Barbero, Eduardo
A1 Rebolledo Leiva, Ricardo
A1 Vásquez Ibarra, Leonardo
A1 Fernández Redondo, Mario
A1 Feijoo Costa, Gumersindo
A1 González García, Sara
A1 Moreira Vilar, María Teresa
K1 Milk production
K1 Environmental indicators
K1 Life cycle assessment
K1 Feeding additives
K1 Animal wellbeing
K1 Composite index
AB Cow milk is a fundamental nutrients source for the human diet at all stages of life. However, the decline in cow milk consumption over the years has been driven by increased consumer awareness of animal welfare and the environmental burdens associated. In this regard, different initiatives have emerged to mitigate the impacts of livestock farming, but many of them without addressing the multi-perspective view of environmental sustainability. Thus, the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus emerges as a framework to consider the complex synergies among carbon emissions, water demand, energy requirements and food production. In this study, a novel and harmonised WEF nexus approach has been proposed and applied to evaluate a set of 100 dairy farms. For that, the assessment, normalisation, and weighting of three lifecycle indicators such as carbon, water and energy footprints, as well as the milk yield were carried out to obtain a single value, the WEF nexus index (WEFni), which varies from 0 to 100. Results show that the WEF nexus scores obtained vary from 31 to 90, demonstrating large differences among the farms assessed. A cluster ranking was performed to identify those farms with the worst WEF nexus indexes. For this group, consisting of 8 farms with an average WEFni of 39, three improvement actions focused on the feeding, digestive process and wellbeing of the cows were applied to determine the potential reduction in the two main hotspots identified: cow feeding and milk production level. The proposed methodology can establish a roadmap for promoting a more environmentally sustainable food industry, although further studies are still required in the pathway of a standardised WEFni
PB Elsevier
SN 0048-9697
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/30336
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/30336
LA eng
NO Science of The Total Environment  874, (2023), 162507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162507
NO This research was co-funded by CEPES (118.831059.02) and the EAPA_576/2018 NEPTUNUS project, supported by Interreg Atlantic Area. E.E.B., R.R.L., G.F., M.T.M., and S.G.G. belong to the Galician Competitive Research Groups (GRC) ED431C-2021/37, co-funded by Xunta de Galicia and FEDER (EU). E.E.B is funded by Xunta de Galicia PhD Grant (ED481A-2021/164). L.V.I is funded by CONICYT PFCHA/DOCTORADO BECAS CHILE/2018–21180701
DS Minerva
RD 27 abr 2026