26.8 billion pounds of beef produced in US (recent year)
312000000000 = above pounds times 12000 gallons

total water usage in US = 408,000 million gallons per day
148920000000000 = water usage in US per year.

my calculations above show that matt ball was not correct.
the water usage is much higher than the beef water usage estimate.

but I may be making a mistake somewhere.
I don't have the time to get too rigorous and check and recheck values and
measures.
maybe someone else does.

as if any of this matters - the point is that it is vastly wasteful, to be
on a meat - centric diet.

source:

http://hill.beef.org/stats/issum.html
http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wuto.html

more:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug97/livestock.hrs.html

-- THIRSTY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS. U.S. agriculture accounts for 87 percent of
all the fresh water consumed each year.
Livestock directly use only 1.3 percent of that water. But when the water
required for forage and grain production is included,
livestock's water usage rises dramatically. Every kilogram of beef produced
takes 100,000 liters of water. Some 900 liters of
water go into producing a kilogram of wheat. Potatoes are even less
"thirsty," at 500 liters per kilogram.




"Thomas E. Billings" <[log in to unmask]>@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> on
11/08/2001 10:31:13 AM

Please respond to Raw Food Diet Support List
      <[log in to unmask]>

Sent by:  Raw Food Diet Support List <[log in to unmask]>


To:   [log in to unmask]
cc:
Subject:  Re: new article shows 12000 gallons


the article was discussed on the veganoutreach.org bulletin
boards. Those boards were retired, but Matt Ball (of Vegan
Outreach) did a quick calculation:

(# pounds of beef produced in 1 year) X 12K = total_water

and it turned out that total_water was greater than the sum
of all water used in the US, in a year! Thus this claim is dubious
and probably another exaggeration.

The Vegan Outreach boards are no longer online, but perhaps they
will put the calculations back up someday in an FAQ or other
document?

Tom Billings