Bringing this back from a previous comment. Normalizing the "how many gallons does it take" for different foods into Calories per Gallon (items towards the top are more water-efficient):
Watermelon......... 8.2 cal/gal
Almond............. 7.0
Head of broccoli... 5.9
Cantaloupe......... 3.7
Corn cob........... 1.5
Beef............... 0.2
"USDA" isn't a source. A URL to a document (or a document citation with titles and authors) is a source. I'd like to read that document; do you happen to know the real source?
But it's the number for beef that is contentious. That's the whole point of your comment. And, unlike the others, it wasn't included when you made this comment last time.
Well, hold on. I don't think the condescension is warranted given that the idea of a "source" refers to attributing where some piece of information comes from. Consider Wikipedia's policy of verifiability, that requires all pages' material to be verifiable, but not necessarily cited. If you are interested enough, just try to find those USDA numbers online!
USDA is US Department of Agriculture, which I hope we can accept as a neutral commentator on such matters. This is indeed a source, though not a citation.
How sure are you about the gallons/pound stats you're working from? I'm getting wildly different numbers from different sources; I wonder if they're playing with different definitions of "pound" --- for instance, by substituting "beef cuts commonly used for hamburgers" for "beef".
(Beef is indisputably inefficient, of course).
Slightly later
I'm finding it pretty difficult to come up with a credible number for (say) pork. It's easy to find estimates of gallons/lb of pork, but the kcal of different preparations of meat vary wildly, and the gallons/lb may represent all those different cuts (so you'd need % breakdown of all the parts/kcal per animal), or worse, the gal/lb numbers could just based on some representative cut from the animal.
I suspect the variance in the gallons/pound numbers is due to attribution. Water fed to cows counts. Water fed to alfalfa fed to cows counts. Does water fed to farmers who farm alfalfa fed to cows count? What if my cow eats corn, not alfalfa? What if my cow grazes open pasture? Does water spent producing petroleum to freight beef count?
How about the dairy from milk cow? Does that matter for these types of stats?
Did a quick google search, and if the cow produced 2500gal of milk per year for 5 years before becoming meat, and the cow produced about 400lb of meat, then you end up with 1lb of beef + 30 gallons of milk for the amount of water the article states.
Dairy cows produce milk to feed their you g. This, dairy cows are continuously bred through their lives. The female calves go on to be dairy cows. The male calves go on to be veal or low grade meat or animal food.
Once the dairy cow has finished being a dairy cow they're sold off as low grade meat.
I like where your head is at, but I'm not sure how a cow that only consumes 3000-5000 gallons of water in its lifetime could possibly produce 2500 gallons of milk (85% water) every year for five years.
Further, per the same source, over twice as much water is applied to each acre of almonds and pistachios as each acre of melons, squash, and cucumbers.
What I've found so far for beef statistics doesn't make a lot of sense to me. For instance, California has the 4th largest cattle population in the U.S. (half of Texas' beef population), but is not in the top 10 beef producers. California is the top dairy producer, but it appears that only ~34% of the cattle population is dairy cattle. Further, it appears that chicken has been the meat of choice for the U.S. since the late 1990s.
Am I reading this right: for 1 gal of water, we get 8.2 calories from Watermelon, 7 from Almonds (&etc.) and .. 0.2 calories, per gallon of water, from Beef?
