Resource detail

States with critically low groundwater reserves were responsible for 41%, or about 38.6 million tonnes of India's domestic cereal trade. This worked out to nearly 39% of India's total groundwater being used up in producing and trading cereal among States. Moreover, a further 21% (19.6 Mt) of domestically produced cereals were exported from six States with 'semicritical' to 'critical' groundwater status equivalent to 32% of groundwater, according to an analysis by scientists spanning multiple institutions in India and abroad. The study appears in the peer-reviewed Environmental Research Letters. Cereals are the source of about half the energy that an average Indian gets from her diet. Within them, rice and wheat dominate cereal production and it's also known that they are intensely water-consumptive crops. For this study, the researchers relied on mathematical modelling and used data-sets from 2011-12 the most updated they say that had information on interstate trade of cereals, domestic cereal production, cost of transportation by rail and road between states. From this the 'water footprint' of producing and transporting cereals were estimated.