U.S. Diet Detrimental to Fresh Water Supply, and Rain Forest, and Oceans.

[Guest guest]

U.S. Diet Detrimental to Fresh Water Supply, and Rain

Forest, and Oceans.

 

 

Q. How does eating meat affect water usage, water

pollution and the ocean?

 

From Jolinda Hackett,

 

Source >

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/vegetarianvegan101/f/waterpollution.htm

 

 

A. The global effects of meat consumption don’t stop

on land. Agriculture also requires water consumption,

and animal agriculture is no exception. Animal

production consumes an amount of water roughly

equivalent to all other uses of water in the United

States combined. Besides grains, animals need water to

survive and grow until they are slaughtered. One pound

of beef requires an input of approximately 2500

gallons of water, whereas a pound of soy requires 250

gallons of water and a pound of wheat only 25 gallons.

Meat production is inefficient as it requires the

consumption of an extensive amount of resources over

many months and years before becoming a usable food

product. With the water used to produce a single

hamburger, you could take a luxurious shower every day

for two and a half weeks.

Even the EPA identifies agriculture as a major water

pollutant.

 

(1) Agricultural pesticides and nitrates used in

fertilizers and manures seep into our groundwater,

eventually spilling out into the oceans creating

so-called “dead zones” (expansive areas so toxic that

neither plant nor animal life can survive) viewable

from space in places like the Gulf of Mexico where the

Mississippi spills out into the sea. Besides the

chemicals used in cultivation, accidental pollution

though chemical spills and manure dumps are an ongoing

source of water pollution from feedlots. The manure

created from the billions of animals killed for food

has to go somewhere, and often, it ends up in rivers

and streams, killing millions of fish in one fell

swoop (2).

 

Previous: Rainforest Depletion and Destruction

 

Previous: Meat Consumption and Fossil Fuels

 

Sources:

(1) US Environmental Protection Agency. 1984. Report

to Congress: Nonpoint Source Pollution in the US

Office of Water Program Operations, Water Planning

Division. Washington, D.C.

 

(2) Merritt Frey, et al., Spills and Kills: Manure

Pollution and America's Livestock Feedlots, Clean

Water Network, Izaak Walton League of America and

Natural Resources Defense Council (August 2000)

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2,500 Gallons All Wet?

 

by John Robbins

 

Source >

http://vegetarian.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ & sdn=vegetarian & zu=htt\

p%3A%2F%2Fwww.earthsave.org%2Fenvironment%2Fwater.htm

 

I have been asked recently whether the figures given

in Diet For A New America for how much water it takes

to produce a pound of meat today are still accurate.

 

The figure of 2,500 gallons to produce a pound of meat

that I used in Diet For A New America comes from a

statement by the renowned scientist Dr. Georg

Borgstrom at the 1981 annual meeting of the American

Association for the Advancement of Science, in a

presentation titled “Impacts On Demand For And Quality

Of Land And Water.” He was then head of the Food

Science and Human Nutrition Department of the College

of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State

University in Lansing, Michigan. Dr. Borgstrom has

since passed away (his widow Greta has returned to

their native Sweden), but his outstanding books

(including The Food And People Dilemma, The Hungry

Planet, Too Many, etc.) are still available through

used book searches.

 

It was not only Diet For A New America that publicized

this particular statement of Dr. Borgstrom’s. The

tenth anniversary edition of Diet For A Small Planet

by Frances Moore Lappe states, on page 76, “According

to food geographer Georg Borgstrom, to produce a

1-pound steak requires 2,500 gallons of water.”

 

Furthermore, it is not only Dr. Borgstrom that has

come to similar conclusions. In their landmark book

Population, Resources, Environment, Stanford

Professors Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich stated that the

amount of water used to produce one pound of meat

ranges from 2,500 to as much as 6,000 gallons. (Dr.

Borgstrom, Drs. Ehrlich and I all used the word

“meat,” to refer specifically to beef.)

 

Are These Figures Outdated?

I’m not aware of anything that has changed in the

production of modern meat that has made the industry

more water efficient.The December, 1999, issue of

Audubon concurs, stating (page 110), “Nearly half the

water consumed in this country…is used for livestock,

mostly cattle.” There have, however, been interesting

developments relative to these figures.

 

In 1978, Herb Schulbach (Soil and Water Specialist,

University of California Agricultural Extension),

along with livestock farm advisors Tom Aldrich,

Richard E. Johnson, and Ken Mueller, published

extensive research on water use in California

agriculture in the journal Soil and Water (no. 38,

fall 1978). They concluded that the average pound of

beef produced in California required 5,214 gallons of

water.

 

The livestock industry took great offense at this.

Schulbach told me that they “turned a scientific

project into political football.” Subsequently, at the

behest of the cattlemen, Jim Oltjen and colleagues in

the Department of Animal Science at U.C. Davis came

out with a very different calculation, asserting the

requirements for a pound of beef to be 441 gallons of

water. Jim Oltjen’s work, along with similar work by

Gerald Ward (Department of Animal Science, Colorado

State University) forms the basis for the figures that

the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association have used

ever since to rebut the arguments of environmentalists

who point to the enormous waste of water involved in

modern beef production. (How identified Jim Oltjen is

with the industry can be glimpsed from his official

portrait at the University of California, where he

wears a cowboy hat.)

 

When Alan Durning wrote Worldwatch Paper #103, “Taking

Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment,” which was

the basis for Worldwatch Editorial Director Ed Ayres’

recent major piece in the November 8, 1999 issue of

Time magazine (in which Ed references 840 gallons per

pound of beef), he based his calculations on the

cattlemen’s own figures. Right after that came out, I

discussed the matter with Alan, and asked him why he

had used these fi gures. He said it was because the

cattlemen use them, and while the accurate figure is

undoubtedly far higher, it seemed better to publish

figures the cattlemen couldn’t argue with since these

figures are damning enough.

 

Making Sense of it All

How is the layperson to determine which of these

figures is most accurate and up-to-date? A remarkable

source of objective information for this question is

the Water Education Foundation in Sacramento. This

non-profit organization prides itself on being “the

only impartial organization to develop and implement

educational programs leading to a broader

understanding of water issues and to resolution of

water problems.” The Water Education Foundation

currently distributes a comprehensive analysis titled

“Water Inputs in California Food Production,” which

references the work of both Herb Schulbach and Jim

Oltjen, as well as the work of Gerald Ward (the other

source for the Cattlemen’s data), and hundreds of

other experts in the field. Extraordinarily thorough,

this 162-page analysis is uniquely pertinent because

it surveys the work in this area done by many of the

leading experts representing the livestock industry

(including the American Meat Institute), and many

others representing public interest and environmental

perspectives. Currently distributed by the Water

Education Foundation, the study concludes that each

pound of California beef requires 2,464 gallons of

water — a number virtually identical to the 2,500

gallon figure I use in Diet For A New America.

 

Western Water Crisis

For further understanding, one can also read authors

such as Marc Reisner, former staff writer at the

Natural Resources Defense Council and the author of

the highly acclaimed Cadillac Desert, a history of

water and the American West. (PBS made a multi-part

documentary series of Cadillac Desert.) Writing in the

New York Times in 1989, Reisner wrote: “In California,

the single biggest consumer of water is not Los

Angeles. It is not the oil and chemicals or defense

industries. Nor is it the fields of grapes and

tomatoes. It is irrigated pasture: grass grown in a

near-desert climate for cows. In 1986, irrigated

pasture used about 5.3 million acre-feet of water — as

much as all 27 million people in the state consumed,

including for swimming pools and lawns…. Is California

atypical? Only in the sense that agriculture in

California, despite all the desert grass and irrigated

rice, accounts for proportionately less water use than

in most of the other western states. In Colorado, for

example, alfalfa to feed cows consumes nearly 30% of

all the state’s water, much more than the share taken

by Denver…. The West’s water crisis — and many of its

environmental problems as well — can be summed up,

implausible as this may seem, in a single word:

livestock.”

 

Of course, beef produced in different parts of the

country will take different amounts of water. Beef

produced in the Southeast takes much less water

because you don’t need to irrigate nearly as much

thanks to so much more rain during the growing season.

Arizona and Colorado beef, on the other hand, take

even more water than California’s. Even Jim Oltjen

(the author of the lower figure that the cattlemen

use) acknowledges that nationwide, half of the grain

and hay that is fed to American beef cattle is grown

on irrigated land. Putting this all together, a figure

of 2,500 gallons for a national average strikes me as

still valid and useful.

 

(Incidentally, the primary reason more water is used

to produce a pound of beef than a pound of pork or

chicken is because the pork and poultry industries in

the United States are generally concentrated in areas

where grain fields need little or no irrigation, and

because their feed conversion ratios are more

efficient.)

 

Underestimating water use has hazards. The problem

with water, as has often been pointed out, is that the

shortfalls don’t show up until the very end. You can

go on pumping unsustainably until the day you run out.

Then all you have is the recharge flow, which comes

from precipitation, and which comes nowhere close to

the levels of use you’ve come to take for granted.

It’s a bit like driving a car without a fuel gauge.

You push down on the gas pedal and the car

accelerates, and you conclude that you’ve got plenty

of gas — until the moment that you suddenly run out.

But it’s even more important with water that we don’t

underestimate usage because there are alternatives to

oil, such as hydrogen, solar, wind, etc., but there

aren’t alternatives to water. If we run out, we can’t

grow food nor maintain other essential life functions.

If we continue pumping out the Ogallala aquifer at

current rates for U.S. beef production, it is only a

matter of time before wells in Kansas, Nebraska,

Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico go dry, and

portions of these states become scarcely habitable for

human beings.

 

The More Things Change…

It’s true that Diet For A New America is now twelve

years old. Some things have changed in the meantime.

For example, the discussion of AIDS, written in 1986,

could not possibly have included the enormous

developments that have taken place concerning this

disease since then. For another example, incidents of

E. coli 0157:H7 poisoning have become far more

frequent — and with USDA scientists now using more

sensitive technology that has only recently become

available, they will soon be finding this deadly

strain of bacteria to be far more prevalent in cattle

than anyone had thought. Mad Cow disease had not

arisen when the book was written, and so is not

mentioned. A great many examples lie in the areas of

nutrition, where knowledge has advanced greatly in the

past dozen years. But I see no evidence that the

amount of water used in the production of beef has

declined during this time. Nor do I see any evidence

that the disastrous environmental impact and

exorbitant waste of natural resources involved in

modern meat production has improved in the slightest.