It takes somewhere between 441-12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, depending on whether you want to believe the stats from the beef industry or an ardent environmentalist/vegetarian: http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big...
My guess is that the real number is somewhere in between, but that still represents an order of magnitude more water consumption than producing plant-based foodstuffs.
The 35mm tons of wasted food is terrible, for numerous reasons, but we shouldn't stop there. There are a lot of things we can and should do to drastically reduce our water consumption. Like eating alternative foods.
Fwiw, I essentially haven't eaten beef in about 17 years. I eat a fair amount of poultry and fish, and occasionally eat pork, but I skip beef both for personal health and general environmental reasons.
It is not so much water consumption that is the problem, it was the ridiculously subsidized price of water to this area that made it a problem. Locating water intensive farming away from a natural resource was only asking for problems.
Then to top it off with far too many people who want that picturesque green lawn and just throwing water on it.
My guess is that the real number is somewhere in between, but that still represents an order of magnitude more water consumption than producing plant-based foodstuffs.
The 35mm tons of wasted food is terrible, for numerous reasons, but we shouldn't stop there. There are a lot of things we can and should do to drastically reduce our water consumption. Like eating alternative foods.
Fwiw, I essentially haven't eaten beef in about 17 years. I eat a fair amount of poultry and fish, and occasionally eat pork, but I skip beef both for personal health and general environmental reasons.