LIVESTOCK VS WATER SHORTAGE |
United Nation Food Agriculture Organisation WATER FOOTPRINT CALCULATOR University of Twente in collaboration with the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands. Liters of water required to produce 1 Kg. of food in USA
Litres of water required to produce 1 Kg of food in Australia
SAVING WATER FROM FIELD TO FORK Report to 16th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Food production and agriculture were, by far, the biggest global users of water and an average of 70 per cent of all the water that was extracted went to agriculture. In that regard, rain-fed agriculture accounted for a large proportion of the water use. In trying to determine how much water was needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people that suffer from hunger, the authors of the report had realized that the water requirement for food depended on what was eaten. A vegetarian diet was much less water consuming than a beef-eating diet, for instance. Household water use, on which people mostly focused, actually only accounted for some 10 per cent of overall water use, while industry accounted for 20 per cent, he continued. Further, one very easy way of reducing total water use was to reduce overall losses in the food chain from production to consumption, from the field to the fork. Mr. Molden noted that it took between 500 and 2,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogramme of wheat and between 5,000 and 20,000 litres to produce 1 kilogramme of beef. Applying those figures to the human diet meant that, on average, each person used about 3,000 litres of water daily to meet dietary requirements. Mr. Steduto stated that all efforts at water and food production were shaped by the impact of climate change. The uncertainty about rainfall because of climate change made the capacity to produce volatile. Thus, there was a need to revisit the way things were handled. He added that the increasing food prices as a result of rising oil and energy prices and the new focus on biofuels, which had diverted the use of land from food production to production of bioenergy, were also important factors, as they had introduced a new component into the issue of food. The World Bank estimated that, just because of the food price increases, some 100 million people had already fallen back into poverty. David Molden, Jan Lundqvist, International Water Management Institute. Pasquale Steduto, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Saving Water from Field to Fork, produced by the Stockholm International Water institute in collaboration with the International Water Management Institute of Sri Lanka, the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the Stockholm Environment Institute. May 14, 2008 Source |
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