Don't Just Take it From Us!
Adopting a plant-based vegan diet is the single most significant water-saving effort an individual can make, in the face of California's severe drought or otherwise, but don't just take it from us. Select the links to be taken to the whole articles.
These and many more articles about this specific topic can be found here.
Read our article incorporating many of these facts and quotes.
"Going Vegan" won the Best Water Ideas campaign of Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI)'s World Water Week 2015.
"Animal products are the single most important factor in humanity's water footprint" and "we need to re-examine the place meat and dairy have in the diet of modern man."
-Water Footprint Network founder Arjen Y. Hoekstra, PhD, who is creator of the water footprint concept, has had multiple publications translated into several languages, and has advised government and multilateral institutions like UNESCO and World Bank.
"It sounds glib, but we can eat ourselves out of this problem… Less meat; more water."
–Stockholm Water Prize Laureate Prof. John Anthony Allen, who calls going veg "the magic demand management thing that could be done" to avoid water crises.
"Raising cattle takes up more of California's water than any other activity."
–Justin Fox of Bloomberg View and the Harvard Business Review
"Our meat-eating culture is not sustainable" and requires "tremendous amounts of water."
–Dartmouth Physicist Marcelo Gleiser
"Carnivorous diets are unavoidably more water and land intensive than low-meat or vegetarian diets."
–waterwise.org.uk, Hidden Waters: A Briefing, February 2007
"Of the less than 1 percent of freshwater available for human use, a whopping 70 percent goes toward growing food and raising animals."
"Cutting consumption of animal products in half would reduce the U.S.’s dietary requirements of water by 37 percent."
–National Geographic, Thirsty Food: Fueling Agriculture to Fuel Humans
Producing meat & animal products "requires a lot of animals raised on huge, unsustainable amounts of plant protein."
"A switch to plant proteins by those who can afford meat would go a long way to feeding the growing global population while using fewer of the planet’s resources."
–Chemical & Engineering News cover story
"The water it takes to grow crops for direct human consumption is low
compared to the water it takes to raise animals for food."
–The Stanford Daily, Meatless Mondays and the Drought
"As the Earth's population, and its meat consumption, continues to rise, our
land and water resources may become increasingly strained."
–Business Insider, We are killing the environment one hamburger at a time
"It’s not so simple to say that extensively pasture-raised is better than intensively industrially produced... From an environmental perspective it’s best to reduce or stop meat consumption altogether. The reason is that it’s so much more efficient to obtain calories and protein directly from crops than indirectly from meat."
–Water Footprint Network founder Arjen Y. Hoekstra, PhD via EcoCentric
"Animals fed on grain, and also those which rely on grazing, need far more water than grain crops."
"Plant-based preferences... will have a much bigger impact [on the drought] than chowing down on even the best grass-fed burgers. Here’s to a delicious BBQ season filled with Portobello burgers, bean patties, and grilled veggies!"
"Eating lower on the food chain could allow the same volume of water to feed two Americans instead of one, with no loss in overall nutrition."
–Scientific American, “Growing More Food With Less Water” (auto Word doc download)
"Large amounts of irrigated ground and surface water are used in the production of animal feed in the Western states, diverting scarce water resources and accelerating the rapid depletion of underground aquifers."
"Meat processing, especially chicken, also uses large amounts of water."
"High-protein foods, such as beans and tofu, require much less water than meat."
-Environmental Working Group
"On average, a vegan, a person who doesn't eat meat or dairy, indirectly consumes nearly 600 gallons of water per day less than a person who eats the average American diet."
[Since they specify the average American diet requires 1,000 gallons of water per day, that means the average vegan diet requires less than half the water to produce.]
-National Geographic, "Water Conservation Tips"
"Choosing beans instead of meat can help relieve the immense strain our water resources are already under, and help secure safe food supplies for everyone’s future."
"By making one meal a week with lentils instead of beef, a family of four can save the equivalent of 17 bathtubs full of water."
-Oxfam
"Californians are facing a record drought...compare the large amount of water it takes to produce that steak or pork chop you’re eating, with the likely smaller amount of water needed to produce delicious meatless options."
-U.S. Representative Tony Cárdenas, D-Arleta, represents California’s 29th Congressional District
"The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources."
"The production of a meat based diet typically consumes twice the amount of water as compared to a vegetarian diet."
-UNESCO: Food, Water, and Energy Security
47% of California's water footprint is associated with meat and dairy and only 4% is associated with direct household water consumption.
"Almost half (720 GPCD) of the average Californian’s water footprint is associated with the consumption of meat and dairy products."
"Meat and dairy products have especially large water footprints due to the amount of water-intensive feed required to raise the animals."
-Pacific Institute, "California's Water Footprint"
1/5 of California's water is used to grow alfalfa hay for livestock.
-ABC News
"Per ton of product, animal products generally have a larger water footprint than crop products. The same is true when we look at the water footprint per calorie. The average water footprint per calorie for beef is twenty times larger than for cereals and starchy roots. When we look at the water requirements for protein, it has been found that the water footprint per gram of protein for milk, eggs and chicken meat is about 1.5 times larger than for pulses. For beef, the water footprint per gram of protein is 6 times larger than for pulses."
"From a freshwater resource perspective, it is more efficient to obtain calories, protein and fat through crop products than animal products."
-Water Footprint Network
"Livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."
-UN Urges Global Move to Meat and Dairy Free Diet, The Guardian
"Half of all irrigation water [in the US] is used to raise livestock."
"Together, irrigating feed crops and raising livestock consume over half of all freshwater [in the US]."
"It takes about 1,000 gallons of irrigation water to produce a quarter pound of animal protein."
"The water used to irrigate just alfalfa and hay—7 trillion gallons per year—exceeds the irrigation needs of all the vegetables, berries, and fruit orchards combined."
-Center for Science in the Public Interest
"Little interest in water has been shown in the meat and dairy sectors, which is surprising given the fact that the meat and dairy sectors contribute more than one-quarter to the global water footprint of humanity."
"Nowhere in the world does a national water plan exist that addresses the issue that meat and dairy are among the most water-intensive consumer products, let alone that national water policies somehow involve consumers or the meat and dairy industry in this respect."
"Eating less meat would protect water resources in dry areas around the world, researchers have found.
Reducing the use of animal products can have a considerable impact on areas suffering scarce water resources, as meat production requires more water than other agricultural products, they say."
-Science Daily, Aalto University
"The more plant-based foods we eat versus animal-based foods…the less water, energy, and other natural resources we use."
"There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in Western nations (3,000 kcal produced per capita, including 20 per cent of calories produced coming from animal proteins).
There will, however, be just enough water, if the proportion of animal based foods is limited to 5 per cent of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a well organised and reliable system of food trade."
Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI)
"Vegetarian diet may be solution to impending water crisis, say scientists."
"A vegetarian diet could be the best solution to the increasing water scarcity problem the world is facing. It would mean that the crops grown would be used to feed people instead of feeding livestock."
"64% of US cropland produces livestock feed."
California is shipping "a hundred billion gallons of water per year" in the form of alfalfa [for overseas livestock]. "It’s a huge amount. It’s enough for a year’s supply for a million families."
-Professor Robert Glennon, who teaches a course on water law at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona)
"More than ½ of all the water used in the United States is, in one way or another, given to livestock."
-Dr. Richard Oppenlander, author of Comfortably Unaware (and check out his website)
"Animal agriculture is a leading consumer of water resources in the United States."
-Cornell Chronicle
"Meat production (and animal product production in general) also requires far more water (and energy) per calorie than most types of food production, a serious concern in California’s increasingly drought-ridden conditions. In fact, producing a single pound of beef uses up more water than up to a year’s worth of showering does."
“The water footprints of water-intensive and luxury products such as meat... [means] that less water remains to be allocated to other purposes, such as growing cereal crops to fulfil basic food demand.”
“Replace a heavy meat meal by a vegetarian or light-meat meal using other protein sources that are much less water-intensive.”
-The Water Footprint Assessment Manual
“Cow’s milk and beef burger have much larger water footprints than their soy equivalents.”
-University of Twente, the Netherlands
"Eating more meat and dairy has been the single greatest factor for water consumption in the past 30 years..."
-TIME, "5 Ways to Celebrate World Water Day"
“Rapid climate change, population growth, and a growing demand for meat (and, thus, for the water required to grow feed for livestock) have propelled [drought-stricken regions] into a state of emergency.”
“As populations grow more prosperous, vegetarian lifestyles often yield to a Western diet... [which] requires more water use. (On average, hundreds of gallons of water are required to produce a single hamburger.)”
-The New Yorker
“The water that goes into a 1000-pound steer would float a destroyer.”
“Livestock production, along with its coddled baby sibling, public lands ranching, is responsible for the largest single human use, degradation, and pollution of public watersheds in the western United States.”
-Jon Marvel, Western Watersheds Project (WWP)
"In California today, you may save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for six entire months."
-Worldwatch Institute
"In the case of agriculture and drought, there’s a clear and accessible action most citizens can take: reducing or, ideally, eliminating the consumption of animal products."
"It would be far easier to feed nine billion people by 2050 if more of the crops we grew ended up in human stomachs. Today only 55 percent of the world’s crop calories feed people directly; the rest are fed to livestock (about 36 percent) or turned into biofuels and industrial products (roughly 9 percent)."
"Though many of us consume meat, dairy, and eggs from animals raised on feedlots, only a fraction of the calories in feed given to livestock make their way into the meat and milk that we consume. For every 100 calories of grain we feed animals, we get only about 40 new calories of milk, 22 calories of eggs, 12 of chicken, 10 of pork, or 3 of beef."
-National Geographic, "The Future of Food"
It takes three times more water to produce milk than vegetables, ten times more water to produce eggs, fourteen times more water to produce chicken meat, nineteen times more water to produce pork, and forty eight times more water to produce beef than vegetables.
-The Water Footprint Assessment Manual: Setting the Global Standard)
“Estimates are that a 1/3 pound burger requires 660 gallons of water to be produced, most of which is for the beef. One pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons, a pound of cheese requires 700 gallons, and two slices of bread require 22 gallons.”
-US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) blog post
"All told, alfalfa and hay [livestock feed] production in the West requires more than TEN TIMES the water used by the region’s cities and industries combined, according to some estimates."
-New Republic (author of this quote sources ecologist George Wuerthner for this estimate)
"Livestock production also represents an inefficient use of water...A global shift in diets away from livestock products could free significant water resources."
-Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs
"Each day, a person who eats a vegan diet saves 1,100 gallons of water."
-Cowspiracy, via Water Footprint Assessment
"You could save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you could by not showering for an entire year."
"Feeding half the world’s edible grain crop to farmed animals is not only a grossly inefficient use of protein, it is also a staggering waste of natural resources, requiring far more land, water and energy than cultivating plant foods for direct human consumption."
"The biggest way an individual can curtail his or her water consumption via diet is by cutting back on meat and animal products, which are among the most water-intensive foods."
"Animals consume (in plant foods) multiple times the protein that they provide...This means that most of the crops grown in huge monocultures, such as soy and corn, are sold to animal agriculture."
– A Gentle World
"Beef and sustainability are about as compatible as war and goodness."
–Gidon Eshel, Bard College professor of environmental science
"The West’s water crisis — and many of its environmental problems as well — can be summed up, implausible as this may seem, in a single word: livestock."
"Go vegan: all animal products, including cheese, eggs, butter and milk take a lot of water to produce."
– EcoWatch’s #1 water-saving tip
"Each of us has an opportunity to take action that could cut our water waste far more than any household use by reducing or eliminating animal products from our diet."
–One Green Planet
“Unfortunately, the world has not really woken up to the reality of what we are going to face, in terms of the crises, as far as water is concerned. If you look at agricultural products, if you look at animal protein, the demand for which is growing—that’s highly water intensive.”
-Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change
"Now that you know the water footprint of your favorite foods, what can you do in this time of drought? Eat more vegetables!"
–SF Gate
An average serving size of almonds is 23 almonds, which equals about 23 gallons of water (1 gallon per almond). In comparison, per Water Footprint Network, a single egg requires 53 gallons of water to produce, and a hamburger 660.
A quarter pound of almonds takes 75 gallons of water to produce, and Americans eat an average of 2 pounds of almonds per year. That's 600 gallons of water per year per person in almonds. Comparatively, Americans eat an average of 72 pounds of red meat per year, which consumes 133,560 gallons of water per year per person. Poultry takes “just” 61% as much water as red meat to produce an equivalent amount. (Sources: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the USDA)
8% of California's water (recently retracted from 10%) is used to grow almonds (but more, 15%, is used to grow alfalfa hay for livestock feed, which is part of the total of 47% of California's water used for meat and dairy) – not because almonds are so water-intensive, but because CA produces 99% of US almonds and 80% worldwide. It doesn't make sense to grow most of the world's almonds in a drought-stricken region. But our individual consumption of almonds, consumed relatively sparingly, doesn't compare to our average consumption of the far more water-intensive meat, dairy and eggs. A vegan diet saves 600 gallons of water per day compared to the average meat-eater, per National Geographic.
Order Truth or Drought leaflets and signs to help spread the word here!
Get even more facts from Cowspiracy's facts page.
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