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Impact of Water on Animal Agriculture



Water shortage in the U.S. is a big deal right now. California's in a seemingly hopeless drought, and the people all around are blaming it on the animal food industry. In animal agriculture, water is used for the animals' intake, cleaning barns, irrigation for crops to feed the animals, cleaning carcasses and finally, at the consumers' end, cooking food. That's a lot of water! Nathan Runkle, founder and president of Mercy for Animals, makes big arguments about how much water the industry uses. He says that to make one pound of beef 1800 gallons of water are used, and to produce a gallon of milk 880 gallons of water are used(1)! When I read this I was astonished. But then I realized even though he claimed to have gotten the information from National Geographic, he didn't say how old the numbers were. A little more research and I found that his numbers, while possibly true at some point in time, were definitely not accurate today.

 Carl Bailik, from the Wall Street Journal, says that even though numbers estimated for a water use have been conflicting, they for sure have decreased(2). A study came out in the 1970's by Thomas Aldrich that said to make a burger and fries it took about a swimming pool's amount of water. This put the cattle industry into a frantic scramble to lower their water usage. It was not something that had been regulated intensely at the time, especially not in the animal agriculture industry. Finally in 1991, Marcia Krieth showed that the amount of water to produce a burger was only 616 gallons. In 1993, the Animal Science Department at University of California-Davis found that only 441 gallons of water are needed to produce a pound of boneless beef (3). Paul Wegner from the California Farm Bureau says that agriculture is an industry truly essential to life. He also states that we must talk about what we can do to fix the problem, not just how bad the problem is (4). We must always keep in mind that even though water is used, it is also put back into the environment. The water cycle still goes on. The problem is, it may not be happening as fast as we would like it to. I believe, however, that as the animal agriculture industry grows, the efficiency will increase (as it already is doing) and we will find ways through recycling, desalination, and other techniques to keep our water cycle working.

 1. "Can Eating Less Meat Save California?" Runkle, Nathan. The San Diego Union Tribune. 9 April 2015. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015.

 2. "How Much Water Goes Into a Burger? Studies Show Different Answers." Bailik, Carl. The Wall Street Journal. May 2006. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015.

 3. "University of California-Davis Highlights" UC-D. Oltjen, Dr. J.W. Aug. 1993. Accessed 6 Oct. 2015.

 4. "Let's Discuss Water Honestly." Wegner, Paul. California Farm Bureau Federation. April 2015. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015. 
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Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 15, 2015 at 9:54 AM

    Are there any possible way to lower the amount of water usage or is it about as low as it can get?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Agrarian's AlcoveOctober 15, 2015 at 6:36 PM

    While it may be hard to lower the current water usage, it is not impossible. Scientists are looking into ways of to perform efficient desalination to convert salt water into freshwater. As an individual you can do your part by taking shorter showers, watering your lawn less, minimizing the amounts of water used for cleaning, and other things of that nature.

    ReplyDelete

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