Manufacturing 1bn Danone
The number of litres of factory water that Danone reused in 2023.
Once you factor in broader climatic pressures – thanks partly to global warming, roughly half the world’s population lack enough water for at least some of the time – and no wonder experts are so anxious about the problem. As Adrian Sym explains: “Excessive water use can have various negative environmental consequences, both locally and on a broader scale.” That’s doubly true, stresses the CEO at the Alliance for Water Stewardship (A4WS), when agricultural water pumping can actually make climate change worse, exacerbating the very factors that make freshwater so rare. Yet the situation isn’t hopeless. With new technologies at their back, coupled with thoughtful data management, growers and manufacturers the world over are drastically cutting the water they use, with happy consequences for their neighbours and the planet.
Water big burden!
More than 70% of the world’s freshwater resources are used for agricultural purposes, prompting a new age of ‘water stewardship’ by the biggest producers.
Everyday agricultural staples require a bewildering amount of water. Consider the humble potato. According to one estimate, a single kilo of spuds needs about 250 litres of water to grow. Given even small countries such as Britain plant vast amounts of the starchy vegetables each year, you can soon see how water use can spiral, something that’s certainly true for the world’s biggest agrifood players. “For Danone,” says Alfredo Zein, the multinational’s water science, stewardship and processing director, “roughly 90% of our water footprint is coming from ingredients we source from agriculture, compared to less than 1% for the water we use in our products and in our factories to manufacture our products.” Nor is this bonanza hard to appreciate: with populations soaring from Indonesia to the Congo, we’ll collectively need 60% more food by 2050. Yet if the agrifood sector is clearly necessary, water use can cause a world of problems. On a basic level, that encompasses over-consumption: droughts from Arizona to Jordan can partly be explained by agricultural
demand. As Sym stresses, however, excessive water use can have desultory second-order consequences too. At a local level, for instance, he says that “over-extraction of freshwater” can damage aquifers, a problem exacerbated by over-irrigation and agrochemical runoff. That’s clear enough in practice: in the Spanish province of Almería, to give one example, the local flamingo population is threatened by encroaching greenhouses and other kinds of water pollution.
As the plight of the Spanish flamingos suggests, the impact of agricultural water use is necessarily local. “It is important,” says Sym, “to note that water risks and impacts are incredibly dependent on context,” adding that a farm growing “thirsty crops” in a water- stressed region is obviously more dangerous than a neighbour planting drought-resistant crops and leaning on efficient irrigation. Perhaps for that reason, agrifarm insiders are careful to first understand the difficulties of particular ecosystems before springing into action. Especially for the largest players, that can be tough. Boasting some 100,000 employees spread across 130 countries – even as supply chain partners outnumber actual staff by seven to one – Zein unsurprisingly says that gathering the relevant data at Danone isn’t always easy.
Liquid gold
In the first instance, Zein and his colleagues rely on outside support. Joining a scheme called the Water Footprint Network, it brings together agrifood companies, external experts and donors to calculate the amount of water consumed for every kilo of Danone produce grown, even as the the vagaries of location and climate are also factored in. From there, Danone can start thinking about targeted solutions – and here too subtlety is the order of the day. Implementing what he calls a “multi-local” approach, Zein offers the example of Indonesia, where
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Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
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