If everyone grew their vegetables, would that decrease or increase overall collective water use?

It might take more water net/net but the benefit is that you would be decentralizing the draw of the water. Also aquifers can handle smaller draw downs over longer periods better than the same amount of water drawn faster.

Icarus

 

No matter how much water your lettuce needs, it is NOTHING compared to the amount of water required to produce beef.

Growing your own produce, and replacing meat with veggies, saves an amazing amount of fresh water - water which is rapidly vanishing for many people in this world.

 

Yea, but lettuce smells kinda funny on the barbie,,,

Icarus

 

Not to mention your own produce tastes better.

I think overall it decreases overall, as aquifiers do empty themselves faster than they replenish, and city-suburb water systems leak something terrible.

 

I read an article a while back in the LA Times, about heavy mulching with hay or alfalfa. Once you set up raised beds, the moisture is trapped below the thick hay mulch, and you will barely need to water. I did a quick search, but could not find the article.

The point is that you can grow vegetables in the back yard, more than enough for your own consumption and consume very little water. This is the next step on our landscaping project; the back yard with multiple planter beds for flowers and edibles.

 

Mulch makes a huge difference in water consumption, and helps keep the predators at bay - both the legged and rooted kinds.

Drip irrigation also cuts down on water use, since the water is delivered right where it's needed, and nothing is lost to spray.

So, done properly, I'd say growing your own uses less water. Veggies, anyway. Beef, not so much. Anyone for rabbit stew?

 

Either a farmer is going to have to water the thirsty lettuce and ship it to you or you can water it yourself. Besides, doesn't fossil fuel require water for production? Given this, I would imagine you're at a huge net deficit for water use growing your own lettuce. Grown your own thirsty lettuce without guilt!

 

Grey water from sinks, baths, showers etc make a great second use of water for plants. I have been watering my fruit trees for years with dish water.

Also, a well designed septic drain field can (with proper design and planning) be a great source for water for the surrounding area. When you think about it, the same water we flush down the toilet goes into the ground to be cleaned, using it as a source of water for gardens and orchards is a fine idea. (You just have to keep the roots out of the drain field)

Icarus

 

I'd never cross Rae Vynn
But . . . Just yesterday, PBS had a show on how much of Europe is being over-run with wild boar ... and I have to admit ... right about that time ... a B.L.T. sounded pretty good

tofu bacon, of course

Yea, I know some (you & Danial, etc) abhore us eating animals ... still, every action will have some kind of reaction. Don't eat the boar, and you'll be over-run. If you nearly irradicate all the California sea lions for meat and/or coats, and you'll suddenly have 100's TON'S of crab & spiny lobster covering our shores (a mature sea lion averages nearly TWENTY POUNDS of either crab, fish, lobster or abalony) ... and what fisherman would want to see that ??

As a kid, my dad used to take me up to Avila Beach (north of Santa Barbara) every year. He'd buy fish heads for bait ... tie 'em into a net, that was tied to a 4 foot circular metal frame. After you lower the net down into the sea, all you had to do was have a couple beers and stand around waiting. Pull the net up onto the pier, and you'd EASILY have 4 or 5 BIG ol' crabs. Same with my scuba shore dives I used to do up the north coast ... tons of abalony and crab. Who can afford abalony any more.

With beef though, "sustainability" relating to water supplies is much more critical ... so in regards to that ... I get it. Still ... I REALLY miss getting my nightly limit of lobser for the cost of a refill of a scuba tank




.

 

Contrary to some, I really am not totally opposed to people eating animals... I don't do it myself, and I believe that the over-eating of animals/animal products is very detrimental to health and the environment.
That said, if you are going to eat animals:
1) Eat very, very little. Nearly every indigenous culture that is healthy uses meat as flavoring, NOT as the main dish. Read the China Study.
2) Eat wild animals, birds, and fish from pristine environments. Unfortunately, there are very few pristine environments anymore, and wild game is nearly as polluted from herbicides, pesticides, and parasites as farmed animals are.
3) Purchase ONLY organically raised, grass fed meat from small, family-owned farms/ranches, where you can visit and SEE how the animals are treated/fed/pastured. Your exposure to injected hormones, antibiotics in the feed, and pesticide residues will be much lower. Bonus side benefits is that these smaller operations do not utilize the large packing plants that conventionally raised beef and pork do, so you are protecting yourself from the rampant contaminants and diseases that are inherent there.

 

If I wasn't supposed to eat animals God wouldn't have made them so delicious. :hungry: Hiking and scuba diving are like window shopping...mmm, that looks tasty! I decide what sort of seafood I'll have for dinner while diving. (To my surprise I learned in Puerto Rico that trunkfish are fantastic.)

 

Here Kitty Kitty ! ! !

(disclaimer, I own three cats, and yes they love me back)

Also, we never buy outright meat products, but some manufactured foods will have meat byproducts - like McCain veggie pizza, their dough, etc.

I call myself an eco-vore, sounds better than eco-getarian.

 

Except, to name a few:

The Masai, the Innuit, and the Great Plains native Americans. They ate almost nothing but meat. The innuit considered plants inedible (save for one kind of root they would eat when under the cosh).

The difference is that moder meat is rubbish because it grain fed. As a result, it's very high in omega-6 fatty acids and very poor in omega-3's. The American diet, in particular, is very poor in omega-3's. The imbalance between omega-3's and omega-6's is not good. There's a current hypothesis that post partum depression can be explained by this omega-3 deficiency. One study testing this is puuting pregnant women on fish oil. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

With regards to the original topic... doing things at a micro scale allows you to exert, at not too great a cost, a lot of control over the growing environment. I would be REALLY surprised if a large industrial farm could outperform you or me in terms of resource conservation. I am growing lettuce this year and it's doing great. I will definitely include it in the mix next year. In fact, if I only could grow one thing, it would be lettuce. Fortunately, no one's making me do that.

 

When growing your own lettuce (vegetables), you have the ability to target water them. When you water your produce, you probably use a hose, or a watering can or something like that. Likely you don't hook up a "rainbird" sprinkler and water the whole back yard along with your lettuce. A large scale farm doesn't have the option of target watering, they overhead water using a sprinkler and some percentage of that will go where they want. The rest will go to targets they don't want to water or evaporate into the air.

 

I would echo the thought that the water volume should be lower with proper drip and mulch in place. The power to move the water may be a bit greater, but the power to move the water pales in comparison to the fuel used to transport the food. Better to ship seeds.