Worksheet Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics

Larkspur County's Virtual Water Exports: A Farm Trade Worksheet

A grade 9 geography worksheet where students calculate the virtual water in a fictional county's beef and wheat shipments and reason about drought, trade, and land use.

Grade: Grade 9
Subject: Social Studies & Civics
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

D2.Geo.10.9-12 C3 Framework

Evaluate how changes in the environmental and cultural characteristics of a place or region influence spatial patterns of trade and land use.

How this material aligns: Items 7 and 9 have students evaluate how a drought would rearrange Larkspur County's crop choices, land use, and trade partners, the spatial reasoning this geography indicator names.

All materials for D2.Geo.10.9-12 →

D2.Eco.1.9-12 C3 Framework

Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.

How this material aligns: Item 8 asks students to analyze how water scarcity shapes the incentive to shift water-intensive production toward wetter regions, the incentive analysis this economics indicator requires.

All materials for D2.Eco.1.9-12 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-23.

Objectives

Students will calculate the virtual water embodied in agricultural shipments.
Students will compare the water intensity of two crops per pound.
Students will explain how drought can shift patterns of crop production and trade.

Vocabulary

Virtual water: The hidden water it took to make something. A hamburger, a cotton shirt, and a sheet of paper each carry a large invisible water cost.
Water footprint: All the water it takes to make the things we use and eat, counting water used far away. A hamburger's water footprint includes the water that grew the cattle's feed.

Also: irrigation, export, land use

Teacher overview

When a dry region ships food to a wet one, it also ships the water used to grow that food, an idea geographers call virtual water. This worksheet has students calculate the virtual water in the farm shipments of the fictional Larkspur County, an arid farming region, and then reason about what a drought would do to its crops, its land use, and its trade. The numbers come from widely cited water-footprint estimates (Water Footprint Network global averages), and the shipment amounts are set for this scenario so the geography stays concrete. Most of the beef figure is rainwater used by the pasture and feed crops cattle eat, not irrigation or tap water, which matters when students discuss items 5 and 8.

Larkspur County's Virtual Water Exports: A Farm Trade Worksheet — Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Producing one pound of beef takes roughly 1,800 gallons of water, while producing one pound of wheat takes roughly 220 gallons. The fictional Larkspur County is an arid region that irrigates its farms with groundwater. In one month, Larkspur ships 2,000 pounds of beef and 50,000 pounds of wheat to buyers in other states. Use these figures and show your work.

How many gallons of virtual water are embodied in Larkspur's monthly beef shipment of 2,000 pounds?
How many gallons of virtual water are embodied in Larkspur's monthly wheat shipment of 50,000 pounds?
Which shipment carries more virtual water, and by how many gallons?
Per pound, which product is more water-intensive, and about how many times more water does it take than the other?
Larkspur is entering a drought and must reduce water use. If it stopped producing the 2,000 pounds of beef it ships each month, how many gallons of water would it save that month?
Agriculture accounts for roughly 70% of the world's freshwater withdrawals. Explain what virtual water means, and why a dry region that exports beef is, in effect, exporting water.
Using your answers, explain why a lasting drought in Larkspur could change which crops the county grows and which regions it trades with.
A wetter county named Fenmoor can produce the same goods using rainfall instead of irrigation. Using cost and benefit, argue whether water-intensive beef production should shift toward regions like Fenmoor.
Suppose Larkspur switched the land it now uses for 2,000 pounds of beef to wheat instead, and that land could produce 20,000 pounds of wheat. How many gallons of virtual water would that wheat require, and how does it compare with the beef's virtual water?

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: 3,600,000 gallons. In the Larkspur scenario, 2,000 pounds multiplied by 1,800 gallons per pound equals 3,600,000 gallons.
Answer: 11,000,000 gallons. Here 50,000 pounds multiplied by 220 gallons per pound equals 11,000,000 gallons.
Answer: The wheat shipment, by 7,400,000 gallons. Wheat's 11,000,000 gallons minus beef's 3,600,000 gallons is 7,400,000 gallons more.
Answer: Beef, about 8 times more. At 1,800 gallons per pound versus 220 gallons per pound, beef takes 1,800 divided by 220, or about 8.2 times as much water per pound.
Answer: 3,600,000 gallons. Not producing the beef saves its full virtual water, the same 3,600,000 gallons found in item 1. Because the 1,800-gallon figure is a global average that is mostly rainwater used by pasture and feed crops, the groundwater Larkspur would actually save depends on how much of its cattle feed is irrigated.
Answer: Virtual water is the water used to produce a good, carried along with the good when it is traded. A dry region that exports beef sends away the large amount of water used to raise that beef, so it is effectively exporting water it can least afford to lose, especially since agriculture uses about 70% of the world's freshwater withdrawals.
Answer: Accept answers noting that a drought raises the cost and risk of the water-intensive product. Larkspur would have an incentive to produce less beef and more of a crop that uses less water per pound, like wheat, and it might trade more with regions that still have water, shifting both its land use and its trade partners.
Answer: Accept a reasoned cost-benefit argument. A strong answer notes that shifting beef production to a rainfall-fed region like Fenmoor could save large amounts of Larkspur's irrigation water, since Fenmoor's pasture and feed crops would draw on rain for much of the 1,800 gallons each pound of beef embodies, while also weighing costs such as transportation, lost local jobs, or Fenmoor's own limits.
Answer: 4,400,000 gallons, which is 800,000 gallons more than the beef. The 20,000 pounds of wheat multiplied by 220 gallons per pound is 4,400,000 gallons, compared with the beef's 3,600,000 gallons, a difference of 800,000 gallons. Wheat uses less water per pound, yet the same land yields ten times as many pounds of wheat as beef, so the total water rises.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the two water-footprint numbers on a reference card and a filled-in example (a 500-pound beef shipment worked through to 900,000 gallons) before students begin. Supply the multiplication setups for items 1 and 2 with the numbers already placed.

Extension

Ask students to work out, using only the figures in this worksheet, how Larkspur's total monthly virtual-water export would change if it doubled wheat shipments while halving beef shipments. Have them state whether that shift would raise or lower the county's water use and by how much.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "virtual water," "irrigation," "export," and "water-intensive" with a simple picture of a truck carrying crops with water drops drawn inside them. Provide a two-row table labeled "beef" and "wheat" with columns for pounds, gallons per pound, and total gallons.