How Much Water Does Beef Production Use

Facts nearly water utilise and other environmental impacts of beef production in Canada

Yes, information technology takes water to produce beef, but in the ii.v million years since our ancestors started eating meat, we haven't lost a drop even so.

Based on the most recent science and extensive calculations of a broad range of factors, it is estimated that the pasture-to-plate journey of this important protein source requires about i,910 US gallons per pound (or xv,944 litres per kilogram) of water to go Canadian beef to the dinner table. That'south what is known as the "water footprint" of beef production.

That may sound like a lot, merely the fact is it doesn't matter what crop or animal is being produced; food production takes water. Sometimes it sounds like a lot of water, but water that is used to produce a feed crop or cattle is not lost. Water is recycled – sometimes in a very complex biological process— and it all comes back to be used again.

Water requirements vary with beast size and temperature. Merely on average, a 1250 pound (567 kg) beef steer only drinks about 10 gallons (about 38 litres) of h2o per twenty-four hour period to support its normal metabolic function. That's pretty reasonable considering the boilerplate person in Canada uses virtually 59 gallons (223 litres) per twenty-four hours for consumption and hygiene. And co-ordinate to the most recent Statistics Canada data, Canada'south combined household and industrial use of water is about 37.9 billion cubic meters annually (a cubic meter equals about 220 gallons or thou litres of water) — nosotros humans are a water-consuming bunch.

Researchers at the University of Manitoba and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Lethbridge found that in 2011, producing each unit of measurement of Canadian beef used 17% less h2o than thirty years prior. ⁽¹⁾ It besides required 29% less breeding stock, 27% fewer harvested cattle and 24% less state, and produced 15% less greenhouse gases to produce each pound or kilogram in 2011 compared to 1981.⁽²⁾

Just back to the beef industry — agriculture in general and beef producers specifically take oft been targeted as being high consumers, even "wasters" of water, taking its toll on the environment. However, in that location's a lot more to this story – it'south non as uncomplicated as 1,910 gallons of water being used for each pound of edible beefiness produced.

If the beef animal itself simply needs about 10 gallons of h2o per day to part, what accounts for the residual of the water (footprint) required for that 16 oz steak? Ofttimes in research terms the water measured in the total water footprint is cleaved into three colour categories. The footprint includes an gauge of how much surface and ground (blueish) water is used to water cattle, make fertilizer, irrigate pastures and crops, process beef, etc. And so there is a measure of how much rain (dark-green) h2o falls on pasture and feed crops, and finally how much water is needed to dilute runoff from feed crops, pastures and cattle operations (gray water). Adding these blue, green and grey numbers for cattle produced throughout the world produces a global "water footprint" for beef. It is worth noting that more than than 95% of the water used in beef production is green water — it is going to pelting and snow whether cattle are on pasture or not. And it is important to recollect of all water used one way or another it all gets recycled.

If you look at the life cycle of a beefiness fauna from nascence to burger or pasture to pot-roast, the ane,910 gallons per pound is bookkeeping for moisture needed to grow the grass information technology will eat on pasture and for the hay, grain and other feeds it volition consume as information technology is finished to market weight. It also reflects the water used in the processing and packaging needed to get a whole beast assembled into retail cuts and portion sizes for the consumer. Every step of the process requires h2o.

Since the objective is to produce protein, couldn't we only grow more than pulse crops such as peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas and even so meet protein requirements, use less water and do good the surround? Allow'southward take a look at why that theory doesn't concur truthful.

Water is just part of a very large picture

Get-go of all, whether information technology is an annual crop (such as wheat, canola or peas) or some blazon of permanent or perennial forage stand (like alfalfa or bromegrass) consumed past cattle, all crops need wet to abound. (And as we talk well-nigh different crops in the adjacent few paragraphs, it is important to annotation there are two chief types. Almost field crops such as wheat, barley and peas are annual plants. They are mostly seeded in the spring, get harvested in the fall and so die off equally winter sets in. Most pasture and provender crops are permanent or perennial plants. Native or natural grass species seemingly live forever, while tame or domestic forage species will remain productive for at least two or three years and often for many years before they demand to exist reseeded.)

Both annual crops and forages are important in Canadian agriculture. Just, when people wonder why we just don't produce more than establish-based protein by growing  more peas, beans and lentils, it'southward non just a matter of swapping out every acre of pasture to produce a field of peas. It's a affair of playing to your strengths — recognize the potential of the country for its best intended purpose.

Annual pulse crops (like peas, beans and lentils) use more water than grass. For dry pea production, for example, it takes about 414,562 gallons of water per acre of land to grow peas. Compare that to full Canadian beef product of most ii.46 million pounds of beef produced on about 57 meg acres land to grow the pasture, fodder and other feed for the cattle herd, and it works out to about 78,813 gallons per acre of land used for beef product.

This means that not every acre beef cattle are raised on is suited to crop production . Dry peas need more than five times as much water per acre (414,652 ÷ 78,813 = 5.3) than the grass does. Much of the land used to raise forage for beef cattle doesn't receive acceptable moisture or have the right soil atmospheric condition to support crop production, but information technology can produce types of grass that thrives in drier atmospheric condition.

Beefiness industry plays an important diverse role

The fact is, today's beef cattle were not the first bovid species to fix pes on what nosotros at present consider Canadian agronomical land. For thousands and thousands of years herds of every bit many as 30 million bison roamed across North America, including Canada, eating forages and depositing nutrients (manure) back into the soil and living in ecological harmony with thousands of found and animate being species.

Today, the 5 million head of beefiness cattle being raised on Canadian farms can't duplicate that natural organization, but equally they are managed properly they do provide a valuable contribution to the environment just every bit the bison did.  Beef cows and the pastures they employ help to preserve Canada'southward shrinking natural grassland ecosystems past providing plant and habitat biodiversity for migratory birds and endangered species, as well as habitat for a host of upland animal species. Properly managed grazing systems besides benefit wetland preservation, while the diversity of plants all help to capture and store carbon from the air in the soil.

Where do cattle fit?

Forages (pastures and harvested roughage) business relationship for approximately eighty per cent of the feed used by beef cattle in Canada. Virtually a third (31 per cent) of Canada's agricultural land is pasture. This land is not suited for annual crop product, only information technology can grow grass, which needs to be grazed by animals to remain growing and productive.

Canada's beefiness herd is primarily located in the prairies. The southern prairies are drought-decumbent, and the more northerly growing seasons are as well short for many crops. Central and Eastern Canada by and large have higher rainfall and longer growing seasons than the prairies, but non all this farmland is suitable for crop production either. Much of this land is too boggy, stony, or bushy to allow tillage, but information technology can abound grass. Grass that cattle live on for most of their lives.

Grass and other range and pasture plants contain cobweb that people can't digest, but cattle accept a specialized microbial population in their stomach (rumen) that allows them to digest cobweb, make use of the nutrients, and convert them into high-quality protein that humans tin can assimilate. Beef cattle production allows u.s. to produce nutritious protein on land that isn't environmentally or climatically suited to cultivation and crop product.

H2o cycles

Simply focusing on h2o apply per pound of product ignores the water cycle. The h2o cycle is important – humans, wheat, corn, lentils, poultry, pork, eggs, milk, forages and beefiness production all use water,but they don't use it upwardly . They aren't sponges that endlessly absorb water. Nearly all the water that people or cattle consume ends up back in the surroundings through manure, sweat, or water vapor.

We know that most of the h2o plants take up from the soil is transpired back into the air. Like metropolis water, the water that beef processing facilities take out of the river at ane terminate of the plant is treated and returns to the same river at the other end of the plant. New technologies to recycle and re-use water can reduce the amount of h2o needed for beef processing by 90 per cent.

Storing greenhouse gases

Plants — pasture and hayland, all crops really — help to capture and store carbon. Plants have carbon dioxide out of the temper, incorporate the carbon into their roots, stems, leaves, flowers and seeds, and release oxygen back into the temper. Because perennial plants (most hay and pastureland) live for many years, they develop an extensive root organization which will eventually disuse and go part of the soil carbon. Considering these permanent or perennial pastures are non cultivated and reseeded every year, the carbon sequestered by these plants remains in the soil rather than existence released back into the temper. As a result, numerous studies have documented that grasslands, which remain healthy with grazing cattle, take more carbon stored in the soil than adjacent annual cropland.

Pastures protect the soil

When land is cultivated to produce almanac crops such as wheat, barley, canola, peas and lentils, the disturbance of soil releases soil carbon to the atmosphere. In that location is also the risk of soil erosion. In Western Canada, our predecessors learned this the hard way. Non knowing whatever better almost the impact of tillage of fields to produce crops, serious losses occurred across Canada —particularly notable on the prairies in the 'Dirty Thirties'. Tillage led to the loss of 40-50 per cent of the organic carbon from prairie soils, and sixty-lxx per cent from primal and eastern Canadian soils. But we learned from those mistakes and today, nigh annual crops are grown under reduced or no-till cropping systems — crops are seeded with minimal soil disturbance. Unlike commercial fertilizers, using manure every bit a fertilizer too replenishes organic matter in these soils.

Maintaining permanent grassland and perennial pastures drastically reduces the risk of soil loss due to wind and water erosion, and keeps stored carbon stored in the soil. The point is that cattle have an fantabulous fit on productive agricultural land not suited to almanac crop product.

Soil health improves

Getting back to the water topic, aside from benefits noted earlier, these permanent grasslands and perennial pastures in fact assist to conserve moisture every bit roots and found matter aid to improve soil structure and help rain and snow melt percolate down through the soil. That'southward known as water infiltration. As a general dominion, when lands are left undisturbed, only 10 per cent of atmospheric precipitation runs off the country, 40 per cent evaporates and fifty per cent goes downwardly into the soil to enter both shallow and deep groundwater reserves. When soils are disturbed, h2o infiltration is reduced.

It's not just dead roots that provide ecology benefits. Because perennial forages aren't cultivated, and oft grow in dry weather, they grow extensive root systems in their search for moisture.

An example of one important plant species is the legume family. There are varieties of legumes that brand fantabulous pasture and hay crops. They are known every bit provender legumes and most are perennial. But there is some other whole branch of the legume family that humans consume at the dinner tabular array. These legumes are known as pulse crops and that includes, peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas. Most annual pulse crops are used for human food, just even these produce past-products (e.g. stems, pods, shrivelled seeds, etc.) that are not edible for humans but that cattle tin can convert to high quality, nutritious protein.

What'south interesting about legumes is how they benefit the soil. For example, forage legumes like alfalfa develop roots that penetrate 53 to 63 per cent deeper into the soil than chickpeas, lentils, and other pulse crops. All legumes also take a natural ability to produce an important soil nutrient known as nitrogen. All legumes can "gear up" or capture nitrogen from the air and convert information technology into soil nitrogen that can improve soil fertility. Forage legumes can fix up to twice every bit much nitrogen per acre in the soil as annual legume (or pulse) crop.

Lands that are prone to periodic flooding or drought benefit from the permanent plant cover that forages provide. The roots and vegetation continue the soil in place so that it doesn't erode, wash away in a flood or accident away during a drought.

Home on the range

Again, when you lot enquire the question, why don't nosotros just abound more annual crops, remember that cattle and soil aren't the only living things afflicted when grassland is converted to farmland. Grasslands too provide habitat for small and large mammals, hawks, nesting birds, songbirds and pollinating insects. Converting natural grassland to crop product results in considerable biodiversity loss, equally the native plants, insects, birds, and wildlife that require undisturbed natural habitats exercise not thrive nearly too under annual cropping systems.

About of Canada's native grasslands have already been converted to crop production. This has led to considerable population losses in some species, with upward to 87 per cent population declines among some grassland bird species. So maintaining grasslands and perennial pastures provides a huge ecological benefit.

Crops and cattle become well together

It is non an all or nothing scenario — crops, cattle, and grasslands need each other. For example, canola crops yield and ripen better when they are pollinated by bees. Because an entire field is seeded at the same time, all the canola plants bloom at the aforementioned time, and each institute only flowers for 2 or three weeks. Grasslands provide a home for a broad range of plants that all flower at unlike times. That means bees have lots of plants to aid support them during long periods when annual crops aren't flowering. Over 140 bee species are resident in Canadian grasslands; bee abundance and diversity are positively related to the presence of grasslands.

Annual crops tin also serve double duty. Canadian farmers produced about 8 meg tonnes of barley in 2018. A portion of that was seeded to what'southward known as malting barley varieties that produce barley suitable for the brewing industry. If the grain doesn't see specifications for brewing standards (for weather condition-related reasons, for example), information technology can still be used as good quality livestock feed. It's a similar situation with the 32 million tonnes of wheat produced annually. If it doesn't come across milling, export or other industrial cease-use standards, it can be used as good quality feed for cattle.

All part of a arrangement

To repeat, yes it takes h2o to produce beef, only on a broader calibration, beefiness cattle are a vital office of an integrated system. Cattle need grass, grass needs grazing to remain vital, grass protects the soil, good for you soil helps to conserve wet, plants provide feed and habitat for a myriad of species, grains not suitable for the human-food market make excellent livestock feed, cattle manure provides a valuable natural fertilizer to pastures and crops, and the whole arrangement results in production of a loftier quality, good for you protein source for humans.

All food systems rely on water, but the most of import thing to remember is the water is not used upwardly. All water ultimately gets recycled.

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