ARCHIVED FORUM: Gurdwara Tapoban Sahib
water depletion
Posted by : anon
Date: 7/19/2004 2:32 pm
wjkk wjkf.
thought this would be of interest.
8,500 Gallons of Water for 1 Pound of Beef
by Jeff Nelson
April 30, 2004 -- In a study presented last week by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) at the 12th meeting of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development in New York, the scarcity of water was found to have a direct relation to the food choices made by people around the world.
The study, titled "Water -- More Nutrition Per Drop," was launched by Sweden's government and produced with SIWI and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
The report's key finding is that consumer's food choices, rather than anything under the control of food producers, has the biggest impact on water use. The report highlights the need to identify and influence unsustainable food production and consumption patterns that require excessive water usage.
The report notes that today, unlike during the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s, it is consumers – not producers – who are driving global food production. With massive urbanisation and increasing wealth, food preferences are changing with significant increases in the demand for meat and dairy products. The report's findings dramatically underscore that by choosing animal foods over plant foods, consumers are using up the worlds' water reserves at an astonishing rate.
“Between the late 1990s and 2020 world cereal demand will have increased by 40% but the world has a finite supply of water,” says Frank Rijsberman, Director General of IWMI. “Current production patterns are unsustainable. They involve large scale groundwater overexploitation and widespread river depletion which poses a major threat to biodiversity and aquatic ecosystems. We are seeing ever increasing levels of environmental degradation and loss of production potential caused by water pollution from agricultural chemicals, water logging and salinisation.”
According to the research of SIWI and the WMI, it takes 550 liters (145 gallons) of water to produce enough flour for one loaf of bread, while it takes 7,000 liters (1,849 gallons) to produce just 100 grams (3 1/2 ounces) of beef.
That means that it takes 8,449 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, according to the UN report.
Contrast that with the 60 gallons of water required to produce a pound of potatoes, or the 108 or 168 gallons of water needed to produce a pound of wheat or corn, respectively.
And when looked at in terms of calories rather than weight, it's apparent that it takes around 50 times more water to produce a calorie of beef than a calorie of potatoes.
http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/water_stockholm.htm
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