Assessing international virtual water trade of crops in Yellow River Basin, China

Faced with increasingly severe pressure on water resources, virtual water and virtual water trade theory provide a feasible solution to improve global water use efficiency for agricultural production and to alleviate the pressure on water resources in water-scarce countries or regions. The Yellow River, the second longest river in China, is facing increasing water scarcity. In this study we researched the crops international virtual water trade of 9 provinces and autonomous regions in Yellow River Basin in 2002 to 2010, to explore the effect on water resource of Yellow River Basin by crops international virtual water trade. The result shows that Yellow River Basin was the virtual water net import region in 2002 to 2010. Virtual water net import was increased from 7.5 billion tonnes to 52.4 billion tonnes from other countries in Yellow River Basin. Virtual water imports of Yellow River Basin relied mainly on the soybean import. Yellow River Basin exported virtual water by international trade of rice from 2002 to 2010. Yellow River Basin only exported virtual water by international trade of wheat in 2005 and imported virtual water in the other years. Also, Yellow River Basin imported virtual water by international trade of corn in 2002 to 2007 and exported virtual water in 2008 to 2010. The import and export of virtual water of rice, wheat and corn was very small compared to soybean. So crops international virtual water trade played a very important role in the water resources utilize of Yellow River Basin and will be increasingly important. This will to some extent alleviate the pressure of the water shortage in Yellow River Basin.