It takes a lot of water to get your food from fields to fork — and your diet makes up the largest part of your water footprint.
Published: 10/08/18, Last updated: 4/05/23
The term “water footprint” is used to indicate the amount of fresh water that any given process or activity uses. Growing and processing crops and livestock consumes large quantities of water; therefore, the water footprint of food is high. Animal products, especially, like meat, dairy and eggs (all of which tend to require more water than fruits, vegetables and beans) have an even higher water footprint. Individually speaking, one’s diet makes up the largest part of one’s personal water footprint. This is why preventing food waste individually matters: because discarded food not only wastes the water that went into producing it, but all other resources involved, as well.
Water footprints were developed by the Water Footprint Network to assess the amount of water (in different types) that is consumed in producing food and other products. Water footprints are composed of three separate calculations: 4 A single pound of beef takes, on average, 1,800 gallons of water to produce. Ninety-eight percent goes to watering the grass, forage and feed that cattle consume over their lifetime. 5 Where cattle diet consists mainly of grain-based feed, such as in industrial livestock production, the blue water footprint is high; where their diet consists mainly of grass and forage, the green water footprint is high.
In the United States, at least 80 percent of beef cattle are “conventionally” raised, meaning that they typically spend six months grazing on pasture, then they go to a feedlot for four to six months where they eat feed made from corn, soy and other grains.
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