5 ms·

We could eliminate most of the current water issues if we reduced our meat intake. According to the USGS, a single 1/3lb hamburger patty requires 4,000-18,000 g

We could eliminate most of the current water issues if we reduced our meat intake. According to the USGS, a single 1/3lb hamburger patty requires 4,000-18,000 gallons. How much of this irrigation is being used to grow cattle feed? (I say this with a heavy heart as an avid carnivore)

mmanfrin 12y ago
It's specifically Beef that is the massive drain. Chicken/Pork/other meats are magnitudes of orders more water-conscious per calorie. (Pork uses 75% less, and is yet the most wasteful of water outside of cows/bovine)[1]. Beef is astoundingly wasteful of water. You could take an hour-long shower and it would use about the same amount of water needed for a pound of beef. [2] and [3]. [1] http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-footprints http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat... [2] http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.faces http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f... [3] http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real-impacts-world-water-day-2012/ http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real...
- Gustomaximus 12y ago
  Or even more specifically, beef raised with intensive farming practises in dry regions is a massive drain. There are plenty of regions where cattle roam in a self sustaining manner with minimal environment drain.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Yeah, but that's over the lifetime of the cow, plus while there is a fair bit of beef and other livestock farming in CA it's a fairly small proportion of California's overall agricultural output. I haven't been able to find exact breakdowns of water usage per sector per year, but throwing random big numbers around isn't really informative either - eg the figures in the top post and the first reply differ by an order of magnitude (I think the EPA # of ~1800 gal/lb is the correct one).
- Xorlev 12y ago
  The west is larger than California.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Sure, but I don't think beef production is the largest part of western agriculture either. The west could produce a lot less beef without the dietary habits of the nation changing too significantly, as other parts of the country could pick up the slack. Of course, I'm largely guessing here, but using the beef industry's stats as a jumping-off point: http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx
- mikeash 12y ago
  Why does "lifetime of the cow" matter? It's not like you can harvest beef from an given cow more than once.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Because notwithstanding the drought water is a renewable resources, so the real question for me is how much water does a cow consume in a year as a fraction of the amount of rain we've been getting (and also, how much nutritional value does the beef deliver in comparison to cost of the inputs). I just like having things in perspective, whereas the absolute amount of water that goes into producing a given amount of beef doesn't tell me a great deal. That's like me saying 'a cow weighs 1000 pounds so it feeds a lot more people than a head of lettuce' - it's superficially true, but not very meaningful.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Ultimately, the lifespan of a cow is unimportant. What matters is beef consumption per year, and water consumption per beef. It doesn't matter if any given chunk of beef requires its water over a month or a year or a decade, the long-term rate of use will be the same for any given amount of beef consumption.
fishtoaster 12y ago
Interesting. Do you have a source on that? My 30 seconds of googling turned up 3,682 L per pound of beef (or 145 gallons for 1/3 lb). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8478283 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8478283
- mullingitover 12y ago
  I traced the citations back to a pretty thorough report, see [1]. [1] http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012...
  - fishtoaster 12y ago
    I may be missing it, but that report doesn't seem to support thousands of gallons per 1/3 lbs. From Table 2, beef requires 7,477 m^3 of water per ton, which comes out to 330 gallons per 1/3 lbs. Table 3 says 15m415 m^3 of water per ton. I'm not entirely sure I understand why that's different from table 2, but that's 678 gallons per 1/3 lbs.
nickff 12y ago
We could much more easily and permanently end water "shortages by accurately pricing water. As I believe Mike Munger said, "BMWs don't fall from the sky, and there is no shortage of them".
- mikeash 12y ago
  Regardless of the truth of the conclusion, that's a terrible analogy. Nobody needs a BMW to live.
  - nickff 12y ago
    I don't understand your problem with the thinking behind that statement; it demonstrates that even scarce, labor intensive commodities can be made available in sufficient quantity to satiate demand if there is a well-functioning market with "real prices". The pricing mechanism prevents waste in the BMW market as it does in the water market, and this same price encourages produces to create more supply when the consumers require it.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      There is a discontinuity in demand for water that does not exist for BMWs. Specifically, there is a certain amount of water that each human needs per day. Provide a human with less than that, and they will die. BMWs do not have this property. The vast majority of humans have never owned and never will own a BMW, and they are still able to live rich, full lives. When you say "satiate demand" for BMWs, what you're really saying is that the market finds the intersection of the supply and demand curves, and produces BMWs at that rate. When I see "satiate demand" for water, what I understand it to mean supplying every human with at least the minimum amount required to sustain life. A free market for water will find the intersection of the supply and demand curves, just like it does for BMWs. However, the BMW example does not tell us anything about where that intersection lies, and whether it lies at a point where humans die of thirst or at a point where everyone gets what they need. It is, ultimately, equivocation. Fulfilling demand for luxuries is different from fulfilling demand for necessities.
Swizec 12y ago
How about if we instead reduced how many lawns people have? I come from a country with more water than we know what to do with and it blows my mind that people in California will just throw perfectly good water on their lawn. I understand irrigating crops that you're going to eat, but a lawn? Seriously? I keep hearing how places like California are chronically deprived of water and yet I keep seeing sprinklers everywhere. What gives? This[1] says that "The typical suburban lawn consumes 10,000 gallons of water above and beyond rainwater each year." ... according to numbers quoted in other comments around here, that's worth about 10 burger patties. [1] http://www.epa.gov/greenhomes/ConserveWater.htm http://www.epa.gov/greenhomes/ConserveWater.htm
- tzs 12y ago
  Better would be to get rid of laws or homeowner association rules that require that lawns be kept green, or at least suspend them when water is tight. No such laws or rules apply in my neighborhood, and I never water my lawn. For a few weeks or so in the summer it might turn brown, but that doesn't harm it. When rain comes, it turns green again. Lawns do have some benefits. They have a significant cooling effect, which can save air conditioning costs. They filter dust and pollutants from the air. They reduce noise pollution. They remove carbon from the atmosphere (NASA says US lawns take out 17 teragrams of CO2 a year...although lawn mowers certainly put a lot back). See [1]. [1] http://cleanairlawncare.com/sustainable-lawn-care/benefits-of-grass/ http://cleanairlawncare.com/sustainable-lawn-care/benefits-o...
lutorm 12y ago
Or we could let the cows eat grass.
- bjt 12y ago
  In vast areas of the region in question, there is either no grass (just sagebrush) or it's so sparse that you can't reasonably feed a cow with it.

mmanfrin 12y ago

It's specifically Beef that is the massive drain. Chicken/Pork/other meats are magnitudes of orders more water-conscious per calorie. (Pork uses 75% less, and is yet the most wasteful of water outside of cows/bovine)[1]. Beef is astoundingly wasteful of water. You could take an hour-long shower and it would use about the same amount of water needed for a pound of beef. [2] and [3]. [1] http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-footprints http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat... [2] http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.faces http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f... [3] http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real-impacts-world-water-day-2012/ http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real...

Gustomaximus 12y ago
Or even more specifically, beef raised with intensive farming practises in dry regions is a massive drain. There are plenty of regions where cattle roam in a self sustaining manner with minimal environment drain.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Yeah, but that's over the lifetime of the cow, plus while there is a fair bit of beef and other livestock farming in CA it's a fairly small proportion of California's overall agricultural output. I haven't been able to find exact breakdowns of water usage per sector per year, but throwing random big numbers around isn't really informative either - eg the figures in the top post and the first reply differ by an order of magnitude (I think the EPA # of ~1800 gal/lb is the correct one).

Xorlev 12y ago
The west is larger than California.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Sure, but I don't think beef production is the largest part of western agriculture either. The west could produce a lot less beef without the dietary habits of the nation changing too significantly, as other parts of the country could pick up the slack. Of course, I'm largely guessing here, but using the beef industry's stats as a jumping-off point: http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx
mikeash 12y ago
Why does "lifetime of the cow" matter? It's not like you can harvest beef from an given cow more than once.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Because notwithstanding the drought water is a renewable resources, so the real question for me is how much water does a cow consume in a year as a fraction of the amount of rain we've been getting (and also, how much nutritional value does the beef deliver in comparison to cost of the inputs). I just like having things in perspective, whereas the absolute amount of water that goes into producing a given amount of beef doesn't tell me a great deal. That's like me saying 'a cow weighs 1000 pounds so it feeds a lot more people than a head of lettuce' - it's superficially true, but not very meaningful.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Ultimately, the lifespan of a cow is unimportant. What matters is beef consumption per year, and water consumption per beef. It doesn't matter if any given chunk of beef requires its water over a month or a year or a decade, the long-term rate of use will be the same for any given amount of beef consumption.

fishtoaster 12y ago

Interesting. Do you have a source on that? My 30 seconds of googling turned up 3,682 L per pound of beef (or 145 gallons for 1/3 lb). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8478283 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8478283

mullingitover 12y ago
I traced the citations back to a pretty thorough report, see [1]. [1] http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012...
- fishtoaster 12y ago
  I may be missing it, but that report doesn't seem to support thousands of gallons per 1/3 lbs. From Table 2, beef requires 7,477 m^3 of water per ton, which comes out to 330 gallons per 1/3 lbs. Table 3 says 15m415 m^3 of water per ton. I'm not entirely sure I understand why that's different from table 2, but that's 678 gallons per 1/3 lbs.

nickff 12y ago

We could much more easily and permanently end water "shortages by accurately pricing water. As I believe Mike Munger said, "BMWs don't fall from the sky, and there is no shortage of them".

mikeash 12y ago
Regardless of the truth of the conclusion, that's a terrible analogy. Nobody needs a BMW to live.
- nickff 12y ago
  I don't understand your problem with the thinking behind that statement; it demonstrates that even scarce, labor intensive commodities can be made available in sufficient quantity to satiate demand if there is a well-functioning market with "real prices". The pricing mechanism prevents waste in the BMW market as it does in the water market, and this same price encourages produces to create more supply when the consumers require it.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    There is a discontinuity in demand for water that does not exist for BMWs. Specifically, there is a certain amount of water that each human needs per day. Provide a human with less than that, and they will die. BMWs do not have this property. The vast majority of humans have never owned and never will own a BMW, and they are still able to live rich, full lives. When you say "satiate demand" for BMWs, what you're really saying is that the market finds the intersection of the supply and demand curves, and produces BMWs at that rate. When I see "satiate demand" for water, what I understand it to mean supplying every human with at least the minimum amount required to sustain life. A free market for water will find the intersection of the supply and demand curves, just like it does for BMWs. However, the BMW example does not tell us anything about where that intersection lies, and whether it lies at a point where humans die of thirst or at a point where everyone gets what they need. It is, ultimately, equivocation. Fulfilling demand for luxuries is different from fulfilling demand for necessities.

Swizec 12y ago

How about if we instead reduced how many lawns people have? I come from a country with more water than we know what to do with and it blows my mind that people in California will just throw perfectly good water on their lawn. I understand irrigating crops that you're going to eat, but a lawn? Seriously? I keep hearing how places like California are chronically deprived of water and yet I keep seeing sprinklers everywhere. What gives? This[1] says that "The typical suburban lawn consumes 10,000 gallons of water above and beyond rainwater each year." ... according to numbers quoted in other comments around here, that's worth about 10 burger patties. [1] http://www.epa.gov/greenhomes/ConserveWater.htm http://www.epa.gov/greenhomes/ConserveWater.htm

tzs 12y ago
Better would be to get rid of laws or homeowner association rules that require that lawns be kept green, or at least suspend them when water is tight. No such laws or rules apply in my neighborhood, and I never water my lawn. For a few weeks or so in the summer it might turn brown, but that doesn't harm it. When rain comes, it turns green again. Lawns do have some benefits. They have a significant cooling effect, which can save air conditioning costs. They filter dust and pollutants from the air. They reduce noise pollution. They remove carbon from the atmosphere (NASA says US lawns take out 17 teragrams of CO2 a year...although lawn mowers certainly put a lot back). See [1]. [1] http://cleanairlawncare.com/sustainable-lawn-care/benefits-of-grass/ http://cleanairlawncare.com/sustainable-lawn-care/benefits-o...

lutorm 12y ago

Or we could let the cows eat grass.

bjt 12y ago
In vast areas of the region in question, there is either no grass (just sagebrush) or it's so sparse that you can't reasonably feed a cow with it.