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Sure, it could. I mean, it could also stop producing almonds without crashing the local economy. But, sure. Look, according to Slate, almonds use 1.1 trillio
by aetherson 12y ago
Sure, it could. I mean, it could also stop producing almonds without crashing the local economy. But, sure.
Look, according to Slate, almonds use 1.1 trillion gallons of water per year in CA.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...
There are 5,000,000ish head of cattle in CA. This thing:
http://www.uaex.edu/publications/pdf/fsa-3021.pdf http://www.uaex.edu/publications/pdf/fsa-3021.pdf
suggests that the most water that any cow needs per day is 20 gallons. 20 x 365 x 5million = 36.5 billion gallons of water per year. Let's assume that that's holy shit an order of magnitude low, and it's 365 billion gallons of water per year -- so it's still only 1/3rd the amount of water that almonds use.
And thus, we talk about the amount of water that almonds use.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoSure, that's absolute numbers. But from a gallons-per-calorie point of view Almonds are more efficient. A social engineer would still want to discourage meat production.
- aetherson 12y agoMaybe a social engineer who wanted to lower worldwide water consumption would. But a social engineer who wanted to deal with California's drought would want to cope with almonds.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoThis is of course the bottom line. California's reservoirs don't care about gaming numbers about "gallons per calorie", they care about how many gallons are used where. And the simple fact is that almond production uses many, many, many, many more gallons of California water than cattle production does.