Surveys show that 90 percent of Californians are concerned about conserving water, but they’re not given the big picture. Long showers and lawn sprinklers are not the reason we are in a water crisis.

It’s easy to follow the flow of water. If we stopped eating animals, there would be no water crisis here in California.

Animal Agriculture Uses Almost Half of Our Water

Growing feed crops for livestock takes up almost half of the water in California. Private homes use less than 5% of the water supply.

It takes, on average, 2,500 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef in the U.S. The average American eats over 200 pounds of meat every year.

That means one hamburger takes about 650 gallons of water to create.

Alfalfa, the Thirsty Crop

Every year, drought-stricken California devotes 900,000 acres of its land to growing alfalfa to make hay, ninety-five percent of which is eaten by cattle (the other five percent by horses).

Each one of these 900,000 alfalfa acres receives irrigation to the tune of 1 to 2 million gallons per year (50-80 acre inches per acre per year).

Therefore, California uses 1.8 TRILLION gallons of freshwater to produce alfalfa hay for livestock each year.

If California stopped growing alfalfa as livestock feed for just one year, that would leave enough water to sustain the human population of the city of San Francisco for the next 66 years.

We Export Our Water As Hay to Drought-Stricken Countries

The largest importer of California hay for the past few years has been the United Arab Emirates, which is importing hay because it is concerned about the scarce water supply for its own citizens. Saudi Arabia will soon follow, essentially importing water from California via hay for its animals, which are then consumed by Saudi citizens.

This virtual water trading loss will be a growing trend—certain countries depleting the natural resources of other, more unaware countries, such as the U.S., Brazil, and others, so they may “prosper” with importation of animals and animal products.

The Big Picture: Freshwater Scarcity

Many scientists have stated that there will be a severe, international water shortage in fourteen to fifteen years. Here in America, we are draining ancient aquifers to grow feed crops for livestock raised locally and in other countries around the world.

U.S. policymakers are scratching their heads and suggesting that we take shorter showers, but we need to get them talking about how eating meat is putting us deeper and deeper into this water crisis.

What you can do right now is spread the word about the water footprint of animal agriculture and contact legislators and lawmakers to make sure they know that we want the correct information out there.

Read more about this important issue at Freshwater Depletion: Realities of Choice.

Editor’s Note: More and more people are turning to a plant-based lifestyle for their health and the environment. Try our spinach lasagna or lentil chili to see how eating this way is delicious and satisfying.

_{Research Links:
“Beef: The ”King” of the Big Water Footprints.” GRACE Communications Foundation. Web. 1 Apr. 2015.
Fulton, Julian, Heather Cooley, and Peter H. Gleick. California’s Water Footprint. Rep. Oakland: Pacific Institute, 2012. Print.
Leithead, Alastair. “California Drought: Why Farmers Are ‘exporting Water’ to China.” BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
“The Hidden Water We Use – National Geographic.” National Geographic. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
Walker, Alissa. “Seriously, Stop Demonizing Almonds.” Gizmodo. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.}
 

The post How Our Dinner Menu Can Help Solve California’s Water Crisis appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

In part one, we explored how eating animals affects hunger and the world’s agricultural resources.

IT’S TIME TO CONCEIVE NEW SOLUTIONS

Most researchers and organizations involved in the plight of nations suffering from hunger believe that efforts and dollars should be spent on improved information technologies, increasing intensified livestock operations, and fostering the continuation of cultural practices while supplying them with conventional food-basket relief. I disagree. Since 75% of their work force is engaged in agriculture and more than half of their population illiterate, I suggest that these developing countries should emphasize three measures:

1. Education.

2. Redefinition of the word “yield” beyond short-term consumptive gain.

3. Implementation of fully organic plant-based agricultural systems.

These measures could thus build a sustainability umbrella and form the key link between ecology, human health, and equity for current and future generations. They would effectively improve soil fertility and provide the most nutritious food for the least environmental cost, while opening doors to economic opportunities. Citizens could essentially “feed themselves” while creating a food, economic, and environs security net, despite what repressive forces they may encounter.

Even many desertified areas, including those in semi-arid regions, would be much healthier and more productive if restored with resource-efficient, earth-regenerative fully plant-based measures rather than with livestock. These measures might include the re-introduction of indigenous drought-resistant plants, agroforestry, implementing conservation techniques such as terracing and other plant based organic methods, or plant-generated microbiological procedures.

DIRECT AID OR CAPITAL INVESTMENT: BOTH INEFFECTIVE

The majority of efforts to bring aid to those afflicted in developing countries can be categorized in two ways: direct supply of food, and investment in commercial agricultural development by various multinational entities. Supplying food relief to these countries may offer a temporary, diminutive patching of the much larger problem. The overriding reason there has been little improvement in the number affected and severity of hunger and poverty in African countries is that food supply has always been separated from the multitude of layered factors.

In the past twenty years, foreign investors have established lease arrangements with many African governments under the guise of helping to eliminate poverty and hunger. However, evidence shows that many are simply using the land as an investment for shareholders or private sector investors (pension funds and private equity groups) or to establish commercial agricultural operations that will bring them a return.

Some argue that these lease arrangements will eventually create a trickle-down effect that improves the economic status of the people of these developing countries. Most observers, though, have referred to them as simply “land grabbing’—acquiring land by making unfulfilled promises to reimburse the locals for use of their land and crops.

To date, foreign investors have procured 400 million acres in developing countries. Much of this has been in African countries, where large businesses set up timber, mining, and agricultural operations. The latter are predominantly meat-based—pork, beef, poultry, dairy, and crops to feed them. Long-term strategic alliances are currently being made by G8 countries and multinational corporations to provide funding for various agricultural projects within certain African countries under the façade of economic assistance. However, nearly all projects thus far (ProSavana, Land O’ Lakes, AGRA, ISFM, and efforts by the UN, NGOs, various think tanks, and others) are merely vehicles that perpetuate resource depletion and further the hunger-poverty cycle by way of continued livestock predominance.

The short- and long-term solution to the hunger and poverty cycle appear to lie in connecting most of the dots—creating a path of optimal relative sustainability—for the people themselves. All efforts for global assistance, whether from a humanitarian or agricultural perspective, should be first directed at creating the most efficient and nourishing food production systems possible. These systems should build and conserve topsoil and soil fertility, while using the least amount of land, water, and other resources. These goals can best be accomplished by devoting all agricultural efforts toward purely plant-based systems—no livestock, no dairy, and no chickens.

WHY NOTHING IS CHANGING

So far this has not been accomplished. If anything, most organizations design their projects to enhance livestock production, attempting to remedy feed issues, cure or prevent diseases with vaccinations for livestock, and train villagers or farmers to use animal husbandry techniques that are thought to improve food security.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Culture is complex and interwoven into many aspects of life, so it is something more easily left alone than improved upon or evolved from.

2. Eating meat is part of the culture and belief system of the researchers and organizations themselves. How could researchers and advisors conceive of another approach to solving hunger and poverty if their own food choices include eating animals?

Affected indigenous people who rely solely on the food relief efforts of outside agencies and subsistence farming find themselves cemented in perpetual poverty. Establishing for-profit agricultural protocols (“commercial farming”) for smallholder farmers will need to be an integral part of any successful program in the developing countries of Africa—but not with the use of livestock or as a subordinated appendage of multinational corporations associated with the meat and dairy industries.

HOW WILL WE FEED THE RISING GLOBAL POPULATION?

In 2009, world leaders gathered for the Summit on Food Security in Rome to discuss what many consider to be the most pressing concern we will face this century—how to feed all of us. Focusing its attention on this topic, the G8 Summit in May of 2012 committed funding to eradicate hunger by way of an alliance between the G8 nations, multinational businesses, and certain countries in Africa. This, in turn, has fostered initiatives that support animal agriculture without addressing the issue of food choice change.

Our human population is expected to reach over 9 billion by the year 2050—34 percent higher than it is today. This, combined with rising food prices, our dwindling supply of land and other natural resources, and changing climate, makes it is easy to see why food security is such a concern. However, despite all the rhetoric and projected G8 funding, our imminent and projected food security crises are unlikely to be solved using the resource-intensive agricultural systems currently in place, which are driven by our demand to eat animals and animal products.

Most of the predicted population and livestock production increase will occur in developing countries. Many researchers feel that in order to feed that many people, the world will have to increase annual meat production by over 200 million tons (to reach an estimated 517 million tons), which will stress the already-stretched ecosystem services necessary to produce it. Demand for livestock products will likely double in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia by 2050.

Globally, livestock production has responded to increased demand by changing from extensive, small-scale, subsistence livestock production to more intensive, large-scale, commercially oriented production. Whether with industrialized production or simply increased units of smallholder farmers raising livestock, increasing annual meat production is not the answer. Either method eventually translates into more land use and deforestation, escalated climate change, draining of aquifers and fresh water, loss of biodiversity, more hunger, and more poverty. Methane emissions alone from African cattle, goats, and sheep will likely increase by 50 percent, to 11.1 million tons per year, by 2030.

LIVESTOCK IS IMPORTANT … TO STOP RAISING

According to the United Nations, “livestock production holds great importance for ensuring food security.” That’s because global demand for meat, dairy, and eggs is predicted to increase as the world’s population increases. In 2012, the world produced and consumed 290 million tons of beef, pork, sheep and goat meat and poultry, in addition to 154 million tons of fish (wild-caught and from aquaculture). This translates into a staggering number of animals unnecessarily raised and slaughtered at the expense of our planet’s health. So, yes, livestock does hold great importance: the less we raise, the more secure our food will be.

DO YOUR PART, AND INSPIRE OTHERS TO DO THEIRS

Most of us find it difficult to appreciate how our food choices can have such far-reaching effects. But they clearly do. We can do our part in reducing world hunger and poverty and improving our future food security by increasing awareness about the multidimensional benefits of a fully plant-based diet—and then, individually and collectively, moving the change forward.

The post Animal Agriculture, Hunger, and How to Feed a Growing Global Population: Part Two of Two appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

More than 870 million people in world suffer daily from hunger. This year alone, six million children will die from starvation. One third of all hunger victims can be found in developed countries, primarily a factor of poverty, as is the case with 50 million Americans. But the destructive forces of hunger often can be most complicated in developing countries where the other two thirds affected by hunger struggle to live, systemically impairing these nations in many ways.

In a number of African countries, for instance, hunger and poverty form a complex cycle, each affecting the other and involving education, human health and social inequities, political instability, and depletion of natural resources. Food choices in the affected country as well as in other, more developed countries, significantly influence this cycle, touching each of the components. Of primary importance is the decision whether to eat animal- or plant-based foods.

HOW EATING ANIMALS AFFECTS HUNGER IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Surrounded by a host of factors, there are four primary ways food choice affects hunger and food security in developing countries—all negatively impacted by the demand to eat animals.

1. What we choose to eat in the U.S. and other developed countries drives resource use, food pricing, and policy-making on a global basis.

2. Our food choices impact decision making for food relief programs and investment strategies for funders of development projects in struggling countries.

3. Local and regional food choices and adherence to established cultural norms in developing countries drive continued inefficient agricultural practices and resource misuse, impede economic growth, and undermine attempts to improve literacy and human welfare.

4. Collective worldwide demand to eat animals suppresses education in developing countries to improve their own agricultural systems.

GLOBAL FACTORS IN WORLD HUNGER

The correlation between animal (livestock and fish)-based food production systems and world hunger can be found in generalized global factors, as well as local ones within countries where hunger rates are high. These include:

1. Manipulation and control of seed manufacturing and pricing, primarily for livestock feed crops by large companies such as Monsanto and DuPont (Pioneer).

2. Buying and selling of grain, including futures, by Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill.

3. Processing and slaughterhouse practices and packaging by Cargill, Swift, Tyson, and JBS.

These few but very large and powerful companies control over 65 percent of all seed and grain and over 80 percent of all final animal products in the world. It is a very monopolized production and economic system, manufacturing seeds at one end and spewing out meat at the other.

Because of the global demand for flesh, cultural, social, political, and economic influences remain strongly supportive of the continued dominance of these large companies and of the meat, dairy, and fishing industries in general. This then drives how global resources are used (land, water, rainforests, oceans, atmosphere, biodiversity, etc.), how money is spent, and how policies are determined. The demand for animal products in developed countries, whether factory farmed or not, drives resource depletion in developing countries while also exacerbating poverty and hunger.

IT’S NOT A SUPPLY PROBLEM

Even with increased climate change and ominous weather extremes, we are producing enough grain globally to feed two times as many people as there are on Earth. In 2011, there was a record harvest of grain in the world, with over 2.5 billion tons, but half of that was fed to animals in the meat and dairy industries. Seventy-seven percent of all coarse grains (corn, oats, sorghum, barley) and over 90 percent of all soy grown in the world was fed to livestock. Add to that the 30 percent food waste from farm to table, and we see clearly that the difficulty is not how to produce enough food to feed the hungry but rather where all the food we produce is going.

Nevertheless, adequately managing the hunger-poverty cycle in developing countries is far more complex than simply giving them the grain that would normally be fed to livestock. A more multidimensional approach is in order—one that addresses all interconnected components by way of the key link, food choice.

THE CYCLE BEGINS WITH ANIMAL AGRICULTURE

At the heart of this cycle lies the ill health of the land and water resource base that supports them. For the past hundred years, slash and burn, pastoral (swidden) methods of farming with small herds of cattle have caused severe overgrazing, deforestation, subsequent erosion, and eventual desertification (approximately 200 million farmers use this method today). As a result, one half to two thirds of all topsoil on the African continent has been lost. Some areas have suffered complete topsoil loss. Much of the topsoil that does remain is simply infertile.

Purely plant-based organic agricultural systems have been shown to be the most effective at long-term soil rebuilding, increasing yields in some districts by as much as 400 percent. Quite simply, many countries in Africa and in the Amazonian region that suffer from hunger raise cattle at the expense of their soil and other resources, while producing a fraction of the food they could if they converted to plant-based foods.

Growing crops to feed livestock in developing countries requires 2 trillion cubic meters of water per year (264 gallons in one cubic meter), and the production and servicing of livestock animals takes another 536 billion cubic meters each year. In certain resource-depleted areas of the Horn of Africa, where cattle occupy 44 percent of the land mass, farmers are able to produce 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of grain, vegetables, and fruit per acre to be eaten directly by humans, but less than 100 pounds of meat and only a few gallons of milk when that land is devoted to livestock.

PEOPLE STARVE WHILE ANIMALS EAT

More than 40 percent of Ethiopians are considered hungry or starving, and fresh water there is scarce. Yet they have 50 million cattle (one of the largest herds in the world), as well as 50 million sheep and goats and 35 million chickens, needlessly consuming their food, land, and water. Ethiopia is cutting down 25,000 acres of its forests each year in order to make more room for their growing herd of livestock, while contributing heavily to greenhouse gas emissions along the way. The country of Eritrea has a human population of 5 million people, the majority of whom suffer from hunger and poverty. Yet they are using their sparse resources to support 6 million cattle, sheep, and goats.

Eighty-two percent of the world’s starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals, which are then killed and eaten by wealthier individuals in developed countries like the US, UK, and in Europe. One fourth of all grain produced by third-world countries is now given to livestock, in their own countries and elsewhere. Therefore, on a local basis, animal-based agriculture simply perpetuates hunger, poverty, and other components of the cycle such as illiteracy (as high as 66 percent in some countries) and poor human health.

In part two, we explore current and future solutions and how they connect to global food security.

The post Animal Agriculture, Hunger, and How to Feed a Growing Global Population: Part One of Two appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

While many scientists and organizations are concerned about water scarcity, the matter is really one of water management. Although important, the obvious individual acts of everyday water consumption are not where we need to focus (flushing toilets, taking showers, doing laundry, etc.) Instead, we most need to recognize and manage the water-intensive practices that remain obscured by various motives. For instance, nearly half of U.S. annual water consumption goes toward raising livestock, while less than one percent is used for human drinking purposes.

Fresh water constitutes just 2.5% of all water on earth, and in many ways it is not fully renewable in our lifetime, nor infinite in quantity. Many aquifers are being drawn down at rates as high as 250 times their ability to recharge. Deep groundwater aquifers that took tens of thousands of years to form are rapidly being drained in many areas of the world, such as the North China Plain, the Ogallala in the High Plains of the U.S., the Columbia River Basin in Washington state, and California’s San Joaquin Valley. As much as 75% of the water withdrawals in these areas are given to livestock. The 12-million-year-old Ogallala Aquifer, which has supported the life of more than 50% of our cattle industry since the mid 1940s, is predicted to run completely dry within the next twenty years.

In many areas of the world, freshwater scarcity coexists with hunger, poverty, and inefficient use of marginal natural resources. Soon countries downstream will be battling those upstream for freshwater supplies. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia are raising livestock and crops to feed them while running their water supplies dry. Sixty percent of Ethiopia’s population suffers from hunger and thirst, and yet their parched land is being used to support a growing herd of over 50 million cattle.

Worldwide, we raise and kill 70 billion animals for food each year, all of whom require water. A few billion of these animals need forty or more gallons per day—that’s over 100 times what we as individuals need to consume daily. While agricultural irrigation is responsible for the majority of global freshwater use (between 70 and 93%), the largest concern is irrigation of crops, alfalfa, and pastures used to feed livestock. The livestock industry also uses fresh water for the animals to drink, for cleaning equipment and holding areas, for slaughtering, and for processing the dead animals. The meat and dairy industries combine to account for 29% of all the fresh water used in the world today.

One of the more common actions people tend to take in an effort to reduce their freshwater footprint is to reduce their shower time by a minute or two each day. The average shower requires 8 minutes and twenty gallons of water. Cutting off two minutes of shower time would conserve five gallons of water daily. This is all good … however, forgoing a single burger or steak at lunch that same day would save 500 to 1,000 gallons of water. Cutting out a turkey sandwich or a chicken salad would save 200 gallons of water. Herein lies the real opportunity for individual activism.

In general, producing a pound of meat requires approximately 50 times more water than producing a pound of vegetables, fruits, or grain for us to eat directly. Between 1,700 and 4,000 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef, 880 gallons to produce one gallon of milk, and over 100 gallons to produce a single egg!

Many of the commercial vegetable and fruit farms I’ve interviewed grow their products without any irrigation, yielding 2,000 to 20,000 pounds of annual produce per acre, grown simply with rainwater.

According to the EPA, the average household of three in the U.S. consumes 50,000 gallons of water per year for indoor use. However, this estimate does not include the water required to bring food to our table, which is by far the most important factor in our water consumption. Consider that the average American consumes 206 pounds of meat each year (46 pounds of pig, 58 pounds of cow, and 102 pounds of chicken and turkey), as well as 248 eggs and 616 pounds of dairy products. This equates to 405,000 gallons of water per person per year, consumed just to support that animal-based diet. A more accurate view is that every U.S. household of just three people uses well over a million gallons of water each year, not 50,000. And 96% of that outrageous water use results directly from the choice to eat animals.

Our current mindset regarding global freshwater usage is business as usual, and it is demand based—meaning any increase in perceived need resulting from predicted water shortages is met simply by finding solutions to extract more water (e.g., desalination, digging deeper wells, devising water-diversion schemes, or “borrowing” from nearby surface water). Instead, we need to understand that this vital natural resource is not “free” and then establish economic incentives to minimize overconsumption.

The long-term solution to our looming freshwater crises can be found on our plates. Why wait until we run out of water? Make the change to a water-smart, purely plant-based diet today—and then inspire others to do the same!

The post Freshwater Abuse and Loss: Where Is It All Going? appeared first on Forks Over Knives.