Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [48]
Figure 2. Calories of Fossil Fuel Expended to Get 1 Calorie of Protein
Enough Water to Float a Destroyer
“We are in a crisis over our water that is every bit as important and deep as our energy crisis,” says Fred Powledge, who has just written the first in-depth book on our national water crisis.*
According to food geographer Georg Borgstrom, to produce a 1-pound steak requires 2,500 gallons of water!26 The average U.S. diet requires 4,200 gallons of water a day for each person, and of this he estimates animal products account for over 80 percent.27
“The water that goes into a 1,000-pound steer would float a destroyer,” Newsweek recently reported.28 When I sat down with my calculator, I realized that the water used to produce just 10 pounds of steak equals the household consumption of my family for the entire year.
Figure 3, based on the estimates of David Pimentel at Cornell, shows that to produce 1 pound of beef protein can require as much as fifteen times the amount of water needed to produce the protein in plant food.
MINING OUR WATER
Irrigation to grow food for livestock, including hay, corn, sorghum, and pasture, uses 50 out of every 100 gallons of water “consumed” in the United States.*29 Other farm uses—mainly irrigation for food crops—add another 35 gallons, so agriculture’s total use of water equals 85 out of every 100 gallons consumed. (Water is “consumed” when it doesn’t return to our rivers and streams.)
Over the past fifteen years grain-fed-beef production has been shifting from the rain-fed Corn Belt to newly irrigated acres in the Great Plains. Just four Great Plains states, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, have accounted for over three-fourths of the new irrigation since 1964, and most of that irrigation has been used to grow more feed. Today half of the grain-fed beef in the United States is produced in states that depend for irrigation on an enormous underground lake called the Ogallala Aquifer.30
Figure 3. Amount of Water to Produce 1 Pound of Protein from Various Food Sources
But much of this irrigation just can’t last.
Rainwater seeps into this underground lake so slowly in some areas that scientists consider parts of the aquifer a virtually nonrenewable resource, much like oil deposits. With all the new irrigation, farmers now withdraw more water each year from the Ogallala Aquifer than the entire annual flow of the Colorado River. Pumping water at this rate is causing water tables to drop six inches a year in some areas, six feet a year in others. And lower water tables mean higher and higher costs to pump the water. The Department of Agriculture predicts that in 40 years the number of irrigated acres in the Great Plains will have shrunk by 30 percent.31
In only two decades Texans have used up one-quarter of their groundwater.32 Already some wells in northern Texas are running dry, and with rising fuel costs, farmers are unable to afford pumping from deeper wells. Why is this water being mined in Texas? Mostly to grow sorghum for the feedlots which have sprung up in the last decade.
When most of us think of California’s irrigated acres, we visualize lush fields growing tomatoes, artichokes, strawberries, and grapes. But in California, the biggest user of underground water, more irrigation water is used for feed crops and pasture than for all these specialty crops combined. In fact, 42 percent of California’s irrigation goes to produce livestock.33 Not only are water tables dropping, but in some parts of California the earth itself is sinking as groundwater is drawn out. According to a 1980 government survey, 5,000 square miles of the rich San Joaquin Valley have already sunk, in some areas as much as 29 feet.34
The fact that water is free encourages this mammoth waste. Whoever has the $450 an acre needed to level the land and install pumping equipment can take groundwater for nothing. The