Water Footprint and Food Industry: Alcotra-Region Nexus

Alessia Corami*

The water footprint (WF) is defined as the total amount of water required to produce goods and services. This value can be determined for crop activity, but also in industrial processes, for a multi-national company, for a state or for a watershed. It is an index to assess the water necessary for agro-industrial activity. 

Water is classified using three colours according to the origin and the use. Green water is defined as the water from precipitation stored in the root zone, present in plants, or evaporated water. Blue water footprint is surface water, groundwater, or evaporated water. Blue water is used in agricultural production, industry, and domestic use. The last colour is the grey water; it is the total volume of water necessary to dilute contaminants to reach a specific quality level. 

Agro-industry is water-consuming, and the industry demand for freshwater is affected by climate change too. Summer 2023 and 2024 have been defined as the hottest ones among the last years, with drought, heavy precipitation and wildfire either in France and Italy. 

Climate change, soil degradation, and soil salinization of irrigated areas will potentially limit future increases in production. Agricultural production needs to increase by almost 50% by 2050 to meet the rising demand for food, fibres, and biofuels. Water management is becoming very important day by day not only for crop and food production, but also for climate change. The increasing of temperature and extreme events are affecting water resource and water quality, climate change will affect crop production (soil evaporation and crop transpiration) and in a second moment agro-industry, too. 

GoutteaGoutte/GocciaaGoccia (GAG; https://goutteagoccia.com) project’s goal is to help micro and small enterprises (MSMEs), involved in the agro-industrial production, to be more sustainable. Supporting these enterprises in finding a suitable and cost-effective choice according to their dimension and type of production. The project is based on three main pillars like to solve water leakage phenomenon, to reduce water during the industrial activity and to reuse the wastewater for a secondary purpose. To reuse wastewater according to the European Law (2024/1765), the French law (Decree 2024-769) and the Italian law (Decreto Siccità 31/12/2024). Reusing wastewater for a secondary purpose means to follow the circular economy principle, avoiding any waste starting from the leakages. EU supports the Circular Economy to reach the sustainability and efficiency in industrial activity. 

GAG project was funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the Interreg V-A France-Italy ALCOTRA 2021-2027 Program.

GAG project is a collaboration among Chamber of Commerces Italy (Piedmont and Liguria) from PACA (Provence-Alps-Côte Azur) area, Politecnico of Torino (Italy) and Aix-Marseille University (France). The first GAG’s goal is to choose the enterprises, the second aim is to determine if there are leakages and the annual volume of water used by each enterprise. The end purpose is to create a pilot test to remediate the wastewater and later to reuse this water. The ultimate target is to support MSMEs to become more sustainable and their formation about topics like sustainability, climate change and the intensification of extreme phenomena in Southern Europe.

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Published on: Aug 12, 2026 Pages: 35-40

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/aest.000094
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