One thing that people need to realize is that water is not limited everywhere. I could water my lawn every single day if I wanted to. And there is no shortage. A lot of the meat I eat is grown locally. Its really doesn't matter if it takes 2,000 gallons of water. There is plenty here.

And FYI, for dinner, I am not eating a hamburger.

I am eating steak.

You are a sterling example of everything "human" about our relationship to the biosphere.

Lots of water to go around. 1st off, nobody here waters any crops. Most farms don't even have sprinklers. So rainfall is watering them. That rain doesn't just disappear, and if we stopped growing feed, california would still have a water problem.

I would imagine its even less out in Free range states. I've been at my parents house out west and had cattle grazing on my parents front lawn. I didn't feel the need to get out the hose and water the lawn where they had been eating. Instead I just went out there and got them off our property. In free range states, most of the year cattle eat what naturally grows.

Of course, there's still the shit-and-chemical laden runoff from the industrialized meat production. That doesn't exactly "go away" either.

But perhaps you're right: The best thing would be to restrict such industrial meat production only to areas with the resources to "afford" it, rather than the "corporate welfare" approach we currently take....

This is just feel good stuff. I could use a steak. However I am having spaghetti with meatballs for dinner tonight.

The opposite happens when we gleefully shit all over it.

n/t

I watched their video.....they want money to keep their company going so they can get funding in six months from the government. Did you watch it?

I posted because of the information on those proposed infographic billboards....

...part of a way to counter so much of the (clearly effective) corporate brainwashing we get....

They are using so really amazing ways to get those figures. They are taking the entire agriculture with billions of cows and coming up with 1300 gallons for one extremely small piece of the cow. How many burgers are made from a cow? Does that cow drink over a million gallons of water? Cannot even imagine that.

Just in case I am wrong which has happened before.

function of their car that turns the car off while at a stand still, saving fuel and pollution.

He wanted to waste fuel and pollute.

One of those all-too-human peculariaties

That exhibit a garish arrogance ...

Get in line ...

Too many people want to tell us what to do.

How dare we tell our corporate masters, or public lands welfare ranchers, what to do!?

just an FYI, from your friendly evil texas chainsaw massacre cattle rancher.

here is what the USGS says about it, their figure is a bit different than yours (take the quiz and see how many you get right)

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-watercontent.html

...about the welfare ranchers.

I will concede that using less water -- because they have to -- is a possibility. But then question: How much native flora and fauna are displaced?

I agree though, that locally sourced is best. And I would love to hear of some public lands ranchers with a more expansive view of the wilderness surrounding the lands they're using....

Not to be trite, but that kind of thinking always pisses me off. Even the most beat out, overgrazed, abused, absentee-owned ranch is likely to have more diversity, a better functioning ecosystem, water cycle, and viewscape than a paved over subdivision. And the recovery will be way easier.

Oh and the thing about western ranching? The water is on private land, for the most part. So even kicking the ranchers off the "public" lands isn't going to help with that. It is highly likely will get devoted to development instead (The Nature Conservancy can't afford ALL the private land in the west)

I am not really a public lands rancher - we mostly least AZ state trust land - but this is a topic I know a little bit about. A bear went past the chicken coop a few weeks ago, coyotes around all the time, lion, bobcat as well. Coatis, badgers, fox, ringtails, skunk (could do with less of them!) mule and whitetail deer, tons of small mammals, reptiles, birds, native plants/wildflowers, even a rare insect or two (collectors come from all over the country).

We may have displaced a few species but I would challenge anybody to name more than two or three. The 4 lane interstate probably will preclude wolf reintroduction here but I would likely not object otherwise (with some caveats/protections, of course). I am not the only one. I admit there are still a lot of folks that have an older view of how to deal with predators but there are a good number of us who have a newer understanding of ecosystem function and our place in it.

We share the land with all that diversity and the public as well. Even though this place isn't "public land" and we don't have to deal with too many of that public directly, we share by having and dealing with roads, power lines, underground communications, oil and gas pipelines, a railroad, communication towers, electric substations etc etc etc - that go primarily to benefit URBAN people. So, go ahead have a hamburger, you are supporting more than a welfare rancher. My perspective is a little different than some. Turn off a light and leave your car parked occasionally.

Because if we don't reduce how often we do both, those uses will be "reduced" for us, and it won't be pretty.

Yes, I know that many public lands ranchers insist they are more intuitive about wilderness than meddlesome city folk. But again, cows didn't evolve to be on Western grasslands. That's why the lands are so impacted, and so much of the native flora displaced (thus exacerbating drought).

If those ranchers started raising bison for red meat production, that might be a little better.

Listen, I have no doubt you go about the task as thoughtfully as possible. Hopefully you will also tand against your fellow Arizona lands ranchers when they're busy massacring wolves, lest those "predators" interfere with "stock."

And I envy you those wildlife sightings. Lately, I've seen one coyote loping along the city streets near my former L.A. neighborhood....

And for what it's worth, I'm opposed to the interstates and shopping malls, too..

bison are harder to manage and need better infrastructure, but they will interbreed FFS!

and I would posit that there are cattle that have adapted/evolved to exist here. the animals that went feral soon after introduction are at least as native as the horses nobody wants to eliminate.

not many folks raise these kind of cattle but you can find them all over in rural Mexico and there has been some interest here. check this out:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/02/10/criollo-drought-cows

...if we're going to keep raising "invader species" for meat...

As for bison, you do know that bison get slaughtered by cattle ranchers, right? ...if they wander out of parklands into "managed" (i.e. subsidized) "public" lands?

this is not my area of expertise, but it seems like a vaccination program would solve a lot of the conflict. not all of course, as there is competition for feed etc, and like I said they can be kind of hard on the brick-a-brack.

(they also get slaughtered by wolves )

bottom line, bison are no longer rare and that is a good thing.

gotta go for a bit, talk to you later.

just people explaining in clear terms what happens to the Earth when you do whatever you want to do

Ah, those wacky "progressive" humans...

...however, and its effects on the biosphere.

I think there's a river in Egypt named for doing so.

...you so reflexively support.

Now, if you could just do it to your own separate planet...

I don't think I can give it up entirely, but I am scaling back. Lowering red meat in the diet has helped my wife's arthritis, so I at more chicken than anything these days.

...at all, or about the very real-world effects of those choices.

I am primarily vegetarian, but still eat fish (sometimes). I eat meat here and there when served it as a guest, or on the occasional holiday, etc. I certainly don't miss it at home.

Thanks for your steps! If everyone even did just that, it would make a huge difference....

and have gotten into curry- some of which I make meatless. Not tonight, however- I have some chicken vindaloo awaiting me at home. I do love my vegetable, though, and beans and cornbread will stick to your ribs.

Person of the Day? I like it.

Also eat a bunch of legumes and veggies, too. I'd say legumes are my "main" protein, though there's also various veggie faux meats --burgers, et al -- tofu (I've become partial to "tofu scrambles&quot and occasionally some actual dairy, along with the "nut milks," etc...

The thing is, even if you have lots and lots of water in your geographic area, in many areas around the globe, people go hungry. These people going hungry, go hungry because they don't have enough grains to eat. This is because places like McDs, BK, Carl's Jr. and others buy tons of beef to feed all the people who come in wanting a burger.

These tons of beef consumed by all the people in these industrialized nations eat lots of grain when they are 'on the hoof.' So, basically the case is that the cows destined to become hamburger patties for McDs and other fast food places eat up grain that could be used to feed starving kids in Third World countries.

This is true.

It is also true that much of the deforestation going on in places like the Amazon basin is because suppliers of this beef need grasslands on which the beef can graze while still alive - before it becomes so much hamburger, as it were. It is equally true that since rain forests act to reduce carbon in the air, and are actually much more effective at this than grasslands where beef cattle are grazing, we can say pretty definitely that huge industrialized production of hamburgers is doing its part to hasten global climate change.

That isn't good.

Finally, many places on earth have problems with water sanitation; either there's not enough water or they don't treat it adequately. Now, with the climate change that's happening, we are seeing huge multi year droughts in places like Brazil (Sao Paulo is out of water, pretty much - the capitalists are shipping water in and I know we can all feel good they are profiting from the ecological disaster) and California, not to mention much of the American mid-west. Now, cattle do consume a lot of water, but the water problem is being exacerbated by the climate change, which is being exacerbated by the industrialized production of beef for fast food outlets.

So, we can say that our love for hamburgers does, at least indirectly, contribute to increasing water shortages.

For this reason many people don't eat beef any more. Some have even become vegans. Now, I like beef once in a while, but eat mostly turkey, fish and chicken because I'm aware of this stuff. Vegans will say, though, and it is true, that industrial production of turkey and chicken is inhumane (which it is unless you get free range chicken), and industrial production of fish has caused the people in countries like Somalia to turn to piracy just to live.

All these things are true.

So, if you live in a nice suburban house in America like I do, you have to ask yourself how you can live and especially consume a little more simply, so others can simply live.

Capitalism sucks, doesn't it? Elevating the need of the individual above the needs of the group sucks, doesn't it? Not thinking about stuff like this and then getting confronted with it sucks, doesn't it?

Thanks for the thoughtful post.

I'm a bit biased, as I grow hay (I have a few acres. My neighbor cuts it, bales it and removes it, and leaves me a few 6 packs of beer on my porch.), so its not a large operation. If there was no demand for it, I would just pay somebody to mow it more often, so he is doing me a favor.

What I'm not going to do is start growing corn. Generally hay and otther feed crops are the least valuable, and they are grown where other crops often can not. So I don't think that if we cut back on meat, there would suddenly be more food available.

Still, we need some really good and large scale policy changes.

We're not there yet by any means, but wouldn't it be nice if we began thinking of ourselves as a species and making policies that benefit us all as well as preserving the earth we all depend on?

I guess what I'm really saying here is that the neoliberal capitalist system we have now is simply unsustainable. We cannot allow these corporatists to forsake all social and environmental responsibility just so that shareholder earnings can be maximized for much longer at all. Our window of opportunity to make some changes that will have long term benefits and present our grandchildren and their children with an earth as nice as the one we were born into is rapidly closing.

lots of 'me, me, me....' responses. Meanwhile we are running out of choices, we can march happily over the cliff or we can change our life styles and make some healthier choices.

I'm all for the latter.

Now admittedly, I heard that from someone with a septic tank, so it wasn't really about saving water.

A fictitious -- and mnemonic -- wine label created during a 70's-era California drought...

Which I suspect would be fatal.

I don't think the video was created for a Luther-like obsession on the "bowels" part of the equation..

I just finished removing all my grass and planting a few low water plants and putting in drip sprinklers to manage their needs.

I think there are better ways to reduce the water we use.

Which also happens to be viciously cruel, in addition to utterly damaging and wasteful.

I like burgers.....a lot.

I don't like poo filled toilets

Third option.......stop bathing

Problem solved!!

And if so, how can your personal love for industrially-raised meat be calibrated against that?

We buy a piglet and a calf in the spring.

They grow up behind the house.

They hibernate in the freezer come the late fall.

Best burgers, steaks, hams and bacon you can get. No hormones, no antibiotics, plus you get to name them!

...and still do them in.

Nonetheless, much better than the artificially antiseptic treadmill of store-bought (or fast-food guzzled) animal pieces...

Our kids know exactly where food comes from and what it takes to raise, slaughter, butcher, and process it. They usually are the ones naming the animals. "Hey pig" usually works for me.

The oldest brought her dorm roommate home for the weekend. The kid had no idea where her breakfast came from. After visiting the chicken coop to get the mornings eggs, and a walk by the pig pen, there was no longer any mystery!

(In spirit: Haven't had backyard chickens since the divorce -- that backyard is the Ex's now! -- and my last planter box of growing veggies got blasted by our L.A. heatwaves, though I'll keep a-goin').

The meat isn't worth it, to me, to slaughter a sentient being that I had grown fond of. But again, the fact that you're at least honestly obtaining your meat, is something all too rare for most "pry my burger out of my cold dead hands" Americans...

we pretty much are self sufficient, we hunt most of our meat, we have free range chickens for eggs and meat, we grow our own veggies and what ever fruits we can, and we have a hogs, and a small herd of cattle for milk and occasionally slaughter.

I think the more relationship we can have with our food, the better off we -- and our world -- is.

As I noted in other comments, the meat isn't important enough to me to want to hunt it. Perhaps left to my own devices I might occasionally fish. But I do wish I had backyard hens again for eggs.

As for the dairy end of it -- do you guys do your own cheeses and butter, too?

as well as our ice cream.

my small home would be totally uninhabitable.

If I didn't shower for three months, no one would get within several feet of me.

These are desirable how?

And I still find it hard to believe that that much water goes into one burger. How much water for a head of lettuce? For tofu? For an orange? The water for the burger is treated as if nothing else costs water.

As for water usage vs. food creation, here's a good place to start:

http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-footprints

Is that few enough?

Meanwhile, how much water for the pork chop? The chicken? The Thanksgiving turkey? The strawberries? The cucumber?

Or just start here:

http://www.gracelinks.org/1361/the-water-footprint-of-food

Sounds like you're already scaling back your imprint with some beef cutbacks, anyway. Good work!

Thank you for sharing this great info.

Industrial meat production is wiping out the planet -- revenge, perhaps, for how we've always treated "meat products" while they're alive?