Nobody look at how much water (and exploitation) that animal agriculture requires 🫣
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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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.
The meat might not be exported, but the water intensive livestock feed sure is
We should account for the water of all agricultural exports more carefully.
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.
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.
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
blue water I could drink. cows make green water available to me.
Another big difference is the $38 billion in subsidies the meat and dairy industries get from U.S. taxpayers....That should also raise alarms.
It's pretty well known how environmentally destructive the meat industry is.
It doesn't mean that almonds, or avocados, or any other industrialised agricultural process that uses excessive resources shouldnt have the spotlight on it too.
Yes they fucking do, but were told to limit our showers to <5 minutes, and upon occasion live by the mantra, “If it’s yellow it’s mellow, if it’s brown flush it down…”
Problem is if you let it mellow too long it starts growing stuff in your toilet. Then you gotta bleach the damn water
That's because they can charge us, the peasants, extra high emergency prices to reduce usage. But do the farmers get charged the same extorted rate, or are they actually subsidized?
Nope, they have water rights and if they don't use them they loose it so they grow alfalfa flood feilds then sell it to foreign countries
Every drop counts. On the plus side when you remove the flow restriction from your shower, you never need to shower more than 5 minutes, because you’re being pummeled with an absolutely luxurious deluge. Warm up faster, rinse off faster. It’s not even clear to me that it uses more water.
My pressure is so high it stings without it, I mean that's one way to get clean by grinding off the top layer of flesh.
I didn't like the trickle that I got, so I tried removing it, and it was high flow but not enough pressure, so I just used a drill to enlarge the hole a little bit and it's much better.
If American showers allowed adjustment of both pressure and temperature like most modern European ones, you wouldn't have this issue
Nobody mention the 900+ golf courses in CA either. Peasants can drink toilet water if they're thirsty.
At least some people use that grass. What about all the water for the dead? Los Angeles has some huge cemeteries.
If we didn't water them after planting, where would babies come from?
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.
Wouldn't that reduce the water pressure? I was under the impression that these plugs improve the pressure. I want my shower to compete with acupuncture needles lol.
As long as there’s sufficient pressure in the pipes, removing the flow restriction increases both the velocity and volume coming from the shower head. I suppose if the pipes have low pressure to start with, the flow restriction could help. But in my experience, it has been quite luxurious and forceful without the plugs.
I take less showers so I can put almond milk in my latte
/s