How Much Water Does It Take To Produce a Pound of Beef?
The short answer: 1,800 gallons. It takes 1,800 gallons of this precious resource to produce just four quarter pounders from your favorite fast-food joint! That’s about 450 gallons per burger!
It’s not that cows are extra-thirsty. All aspects of beef production require water. However, the greatest guzzlers are the crops used for cattle feed. This accounts for a huge percentage of beef’s water footprint, as it takes 183,500 gallons of H2O just to grow the corn and soy required to raise a calf. And that’s just for two or three years, before they reach slaughter weight.
It is correct, however, that like all animals, cows do need water to stay hydrated. Their living space also needs to be periodically cleaned. These two factors also contribute to beef’s water footprint.
On top of using up a TON of H2O for beef production, the animal agriculture industry also pollutes a great amount of the little freshwater we do have. The main water pollutants from the animal agriculture industry are…
Nitrogen: 32% of all nitrogen used in the U.S goes to the animal agriculture industry.
Phosphorus: 33% of all phosphorus used in the U.S goes to the animal agriculture industry.
Antibiotics: 70% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. go to farm animals used for the meat industry.
Pesticides: 37% of all pesticides used in the U.S are used on crops grown for animal feed.
Herbicides: 70% of herbicides used in the U.S are used on crops grown for animal feed.
At a time when many people don’t have access to fresh water, and some have to resort to drinking contaminated water from polluted rivers or streams, it’s super important to value this limited resource. After all, every living being requires water to live! Water is, in many ways, our planet’s life source.
What Do 1,800 Gallons of Water Look Like?
To put things into perspective, if we were to use this amount of water for other daily tasks, here’s what we could get done instead of purchasing that hamburger:
26 showers
40 laundry loads
120 dishwasher loads
1,125 toilet flushes
So, maybe as well as taking shorter showers, filling up the laundry machine every time, and washing more dishes by hand, if you really want to save water, you could skip the burger and go for one of these delicious plant-based patties instead! Thanks for taking an interest in protecting our planet and the animals — the best of luck to you on your meat-free journey!