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It takes a gallon of water to grow an almond. So eating a single almond, grown in California, is like opening one of these (https://hornstrafarms.com/product_im

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• WalterSear 12y ago
  Almonds are a drop in the bucket, compared to the sacred cow(s) that is meat. It's just a tad bit more than NPR's 'trying to lose weight by cutting your fingernails'. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take-long-showers_b_6875644.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take-long-s... http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-really-using-all-the-water/ http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-... http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry.html http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry...
  • chc 12y ago
    I think you're exaggerating a little bit, but meat is a huge culprit that people don't talk about much. The meat and dairy industries make up 47% of California's water usage, while other agriculture uses 46%. A large part of the reason is that there is enormous energy loss in the growing-an-animal part of the food chain — every serving of an animal product comes from many servings of plant products given to the animal. Source: http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Fulton%20et%20al%202012.pdf http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Fulton%20et%20al%20201...
    • WillPostForFood 12y ago
      It doesn't make up 47% of total water usage, it takes up 47% of water used in the production of goods and services. The definition of water footprint from your link: The water footprint concept has been developed to estimate the amount of water consumed in the production of goods and services.
  • raldi 12y ago
    You're absolutely right. A quarter-pound hamburger costs 1,300 gallons of water, according to the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120001666638282817 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120001666638282817 The organization that represents California cattle ranchers begged to differ, contesting that it's only 110 gallons: http://blog.calbeef.org/how-eco-friendly-is-beef-infographic/ http://blog.calbeef.org/how-eco-friendly-is-beef-infographic... Even using the latter number, just think about that. Eating one hamburger is like dumping 110 one-gallon jugs of water down the drain -- or leaving your kitchen faucet running full blast for over an hour with the current 1.8gpm flow restrictor mandated by code. Or flushing your code-mandated low-flow toilet 89 times. And if you're talking about a 1-pound steak, multiply all those numbers by 4. Am I saying you shouldn't eat beef? Of course not -- it's delicious! But California's beef producers should have to pay market rate for their water. If that means the price shoots up and I have to start eating hamburgers made from Texas cattle, so be it.
    • WalterSear 12y ago
      >Am I saying you shouldn't eat beef? Of course not -- it's delicious! IMVHO, there are much better reasons to drop meat + dairy from your diet than water. Human taste is a malleable thing - after a while, other things start to taste much more delicious.
      • raldi 12y ago
        Fair point! But the last time I mentioned these stats, I was accused of pushing a militant vegan agenda, so this time I wanted to be sure to establish my meat cred.
        • SEJeff 12y ago
          And while totally respecting your POV please understand that some of us think things like Beef, Pork/Bacon, and Fisha re absolutely delicious. We can agree to disagree and still be friends, or at least civil adults :)
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  • sbov 12y ago
    I wouldn't say drop in the bucket. Doing the math, from what I can piece together: 23 almonds in an ounce, 16 ounces in a pound, 1.1 gallons per almond. 23 * 16 * 1.1 = 404 gallons per pound of almonds. It certainly doesn't rise to the level of meat, but it's still a lot. Almonds alone also supposedly account for 10% of all of California's water use.
• nightski 12y ago
  On a per calorie basis that is on par with a tomato in the article you linked. In fact those numbers don't mean very much without context.
• tzs 12y ago
  One gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds (3.78 kg). The average almond weighs under 2 g. It follows that less than 0.05% of that water ends up in the final almond. So...where does the remaining 99.95% of the gallon actually end up?
  • raldi 12y ago
    Same place it ends up when you rip out your flow regulator and take a 90-minute shower, or maintain a lush green lawn.
    • CONTRARlAN 12y ago
      So, reclaimed by the city and turned into safe drinking water?
  • calbear81 12y ago
    That's a great question. I wonder if there's a more efficient way to water the plants that doesn't involve saturating all of the area around the roots just to ensure they can absorb the water?
    • femto 12y ago
      Deep pipe irrigation (if they aren't already using it). http://permaculturenews.org/2014/04/24/get-started-efficient-irrigation-systems/ http://permaculturenews.org/2014/04/24/get-started-efficient...
  • jonknee 12y ago
    Most of it evaporates. Either before it is absorbed into the tree or afterwards through transpiration.
    • crimsonalucard 12y ago
      I doubt that. A lot of it sinks into the ground... plants don't absorb everything.
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• imgabe 12y ago
  That water doesn't just disappear from the face of the earth. It'll turn back up again.
  • raldi 12y ago
    By that logic, let's all turn on every tap in the house. Drought averted!
    • bryanlarsen 12y ago
      During the last drought, my city (Ottawa, Canada) took out radio advertisements exhorting people to water their lawns. The dry lawns were creating a fire hazard. We've got lots of water around here, and as noted, using it just puts it back into the environment in a different place.
      • raldi 12y ago
        Great, so can we repeal the laws that restrict what plumbing fixtures I can have in my house?
        • bryanlarsen 12y ago
          Water used on your lawn is returned through the grey-water system. Toilet water has to be treated. Not to mention the fact that you don't live in one of the few places with abundant fresh water, even during a drought.
      • ghettoCoder 12y ago
        What drought would that be? Lived in Ottawa for over a decade and only remember a few summers of "crispy" grass and a few wildfires due to lower than average rainfall. But you are correct that they we're asking people to water their lawns once and a while. The difference here is that Ottawa gets its water from the Ottawa river which is a main tributary of the St-Laurent and is itself fed by a massive watershed starting about 7 hours north (funny thing, as you drive up highway 11 you will pass a sign that say "Now entering Arctic watershed").
• briantakita 12y ago
  We also centralize our agriculture & ship the product all over the world. The consequences are greater energy usage to transport the product, more fragile food economies, income inequality, water hoarding, biodiversity loss, pollution, desertification, decreased rainfall, soil erosion & degregulation, increased wear on roads, a consumerist mindset that is abstracted away from the environment. Humanity is crazy. Simple as that. We need to start thinking systemically; not react with myopic & reductionistic policies. Systemic solutions will solve our issues. Reductionistic policies will perpetuate this game. Capital tends to pool together. These farms that are using up all of the water are capital intensive. In the mean time, large companies like Nestle are buying reservoirs in an effort to privatize the remaining water. The water supply is being diminished while the remaining water is being bought. One can infer that there are efforts to manipulate water supply to turn water into a commodity market that large corporations control. Intentional or not, that is what is going on right now.
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• mc32 12y ago
  People should sure stop eating rice, then. Rice is very water intensive, and nutritionally most rice consumed is quite underwhelming.
  • mbreese 12y ago
    Or maybe just eat rice grown in areas with lots of water.
• dreamweapon 12y ago
  So eating a single almond, grown in California, is like opening one of these (https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gal... https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gal...) and pouring it down the drain. It's highly misleading to suggest that the net impact of cycling a gallon of agricultural water (including irrigation + rainfall) is equal to that of a dumping a gallon of drinking water (packaged and delivered to your door, no less!) down the drain, of course. Also, while the water footprint of almonds (and pistachios, cashews, etc) isn't great, if you aren't comparing it to that of other high-impact foods (in terms of water use by weight of end product) like say, dried tomatoes, butter, or most four-legged meat products -- not only per gram of end product, but per recommended serving (which for nut products is comparatively modest) -- then you're not only not helping us understand how we got into this mess (and how to get out); you're just pushing people's buttons, basically.
  • raldi 12y ago
    I didn't mean to single out almonds -- as you say, virtually all of California's agriculture is water-guzzling, and only sustainable because farms with seniority get substantial use-it-or-lose-it discounts on their water bills. We need to end this across the board. If you can't produce something in the valley while paying a fair price for water, you shouldn't be producing it in the valley. Make something else, make it somewhere that's not drought-prone, or raise your prices to account for the water that goes into producing the product.
    • dreamweapon 12y ago
      I totally agree about making price levels reflect true resource costs, ending bad incentivization systems, etc. (Meant to edit my first post to mention that, but got distracted).