Water footprints of different crops

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    <-Spyke->, ruysposati, and SantaSa added this photo to their favorites.

    1. e_violin 25 months ago | reply

      Why aren't meat and dairy included in this?? Their production uses/wastes more water than any plant crop!

    2. dawngifford 25 months ago | reply

      Actually, beef uses an average of 1,800 gallons of water for 1 pound of beef (varies widely by production method, with pasture-raised being very low), and dairy is the lowest at about 1,000 gallons per gallon of milk. By comparison, chocolate requires 3,000 gallons of water for 1 pound of chocolate.

      So while it is a lot of water, there are several plant crops whose water use exceeds that of meat and dairy.

    3. dawngifford 25 months ago | reply

      www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home

    4. NappyBliss 23 months ago | reply

      I think you should also look at how much is an average portion in relation to the amount of water and it's carbon footprint. It's a bit like saying saffron is ridiculously expensive to buy per kilo in comparison to rice - the quanities used are VERY different

    5. Best Foot Forward on Flickr 23 months ago | reply

      Thanks for the comments.

      There's no reason why we didn’t do animal products on this occasion – perhaps one for another day!

      Very good point on making fair comparisons between foods. It is difficult to come up with a single way of encapsulating the function of food to make the comparisons fairer – but we have experimented with things such as calorie content, portion size or better still a measure of nutritional density.

      The most important thing to consider when examining water footprint results is this: does it take into account local scarcity? A litre of water in North Wales has a much lower impact that a litre of water in Kenya … The methods for calculating water footprints are still the subject of much debate.

    6. EthicsEdinburgh 19 months ago | reply

      Thanks for this and all your other graphics. Fascinating and useful.

    7. Best Foot Forward on Flickr 19 months ago | reply

      Thanks EthicsEdinburgh! Glad you like them.

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