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Almonds consume as much California water as all household use (www.c-win.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/california

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70% of those almonds are exported. But you should take a pathetic dribble of a shower.

For those who don’t know, the flow restriction plug can be removed from most shower heads. But you didn’t hear it from me.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I agree it’s a large portion. However, the big difference is that most dairy and meat produced in state is not exported. Water is a public resource, so it should raise additional alarms when the public is not benefiting from its use.

[–] cymbal_king 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The meat might not be exported, but the water intensive livestock feed sure is

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

We should account for the water of all agricultural exports more carefully.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Top commodities for export included almonds, dairy and dairy products, pistachios, wine and walnuts.

https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/

It kind of seems like a lot of dairy is exported. Dairy was valued at $10.4 billion, Cattle and Calves: $3.63 billion, Almonds: $3.52 billion. I mean, unless California is consuming over 70% of $14 billion in cattle and dairy products, but exporting all the almonds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You can click the export stats. Almonds are #1 export, followed by dairy. Dairy exports were about $2B out of $10B produced. So roughly 75% of dairy is not exported.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well, I did a little analysis and almonds sure are a consumer of water in California, but I'd encourage you to look into the water, land use and emissions impact of cattle and dairy, I know, you are worried about exporting away all your water, but there are larger impact agricultural products and you said everything should be scrutinized more, so here is more scrutiny.

tl;dr: In 2022, California used this much water on these agricultural products: Almonds: 9 billion m³ Beef: 20 billion m³ Cheese: 4.4 billion m³ Butter: 1.3 billion m³

This doesn't factor in other dairy products because the data doesn't line up well enough to compute and I'm just some internet user, so what do I know?

Anyways land use is crazy, beef alone used 1 million acres, while all other field crops used 627 thousand acres. (Source: cdfa stat review)

2022                  1000 pounds  metric ton              m3 water usage
Almonds (with shell)  2565000      1163476.36759503        9362494330.0372
Butter                685953       311146.239680668        1346018632.85857
Cheese                2460538      1116092.71523179        4402985761.5894
Sour Cream            199309       90405.9693368412
Yogurt                377839       171386.646103602
Milk Nonfat           860246       390205.02585503
Milk condensed        108237       49095.9811303638
Dry Buttermilk        60090        27256.6451964075
Ice Cream             77939        35352.8984849859
Lowfat Ice cream      36140        16392.9964619432
Cattle Calves         2197765      996899.664338202        20154320513.9254
 
Water use (m3 /ton)   green        blue              grey  total
Milk                  647          60                89    796
Butter                3519         324               483   4326
Milk Powder           3007         277               413   3697
Cheese                3196         310               439   3945
Almonds (with shell)  4632         1908              1507  8047
Beef                  19102        525               590   20217
 
References:
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022_Exports_Publication.pdf
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022-2023_california_agricultural_statistics_review.pdf
https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/Report-48-WaterFootprint-AnimalProducts-Vol1.pdf
https://waterfootprint.org/resources/Report47-WaterFootprintCrops-Vol1.pdf

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

blue water I could drink. cows make green water available to me.

[–] itsgoodtobeawake 3 points 3 months ago

Another big difference is the $38 billion in subsidies the meat and dairy industries get from U.S. taxpayers....That should also raise alarms.