Reducing the water cost in livestock with adoption of best practices

The aims of the study were to propose and evaluate a method to calculate the water cost in livestock production, considering best practices regarding nutritional and waste management. Diets with more nutritional advanced technologies and with the best waste management had the lowest total water cost in all farm sizes. Farmers that did not balance the diets considering nutritional technologies and that use manure as fertilizer with high environmental risk, without considering the nutrient balance, had the most expensive water. The cost of no-point source pollution in the total cost of water represented an average of 99.1% for NB = 1.0, 98.8% for NB = 0.75 and 98.3% for NB = 0.5 for all diets. The percentage of consumption water prices in the total cost of water varied from 0.9 to 1.7%. The study shows that the aggregation of nutrition and waste management has a direct positive impact on the reduction in the cost of water, and indirect positive impacts on the reduction in natural resource consumption by the production system, as well as its polluting potential. The water cost method proposed could contribute to the ongoing debate with respect to sustainable intensification of livestock, and balance of their environmental and economic aspects.