why is it a problem that it takes so much water to produce 1kg of beef – something like 15,000 liters – if the cows just pee it all back out anyway?
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Let’s imagine that every liter of water will be evaporated and rain down as fresh water 1 week after use. (That is a massive over-simplification, but it helps us think about it in broad terms.)
There is some amount of fresh water available. Let’s call all that water “100%”. We’ll note that by our assumption earlier, it renews itself roughly every week.
So, how much of that % of water should you spend on beef production? It is true that if we spent 100% of it on beef production for a week, then we’d get it all back.
However, then there would be no fresh water for anything else for that week!
Maybe we only spend a small amount on raising cattle, like 5%. Well, when we get that 5% back, where do we put it? Chances are we put it back into cattle farming, so unless we cut back on cattle farming, we don’t get the water ‘back’, because once it is renewed, it goes back to being used for this purpose.
Is it a problem that the water is being used? Well, other things might need water too. Maybe (again, just hypothetical numbers) we spend 5% on cattle, 15% of crop farming, 5% on drinking water, 15% on washing/hygeine, 20% for industry, and maybe 40% left in nature so that there are still freshwater rivers and ponds etc, rather than us drying them all up. If we give one of those things more water, then something else has to lose water for that week.
Point is, even though it is renewable, it is always a finite amount at any one time, and so any use of water means that it isn’t available elsewhere.
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