Make It Rare: How Beef Production Saps Scarce Western Water

Posted on Sustainable Waters by Brian Richter on Aug 05, 2020

Read the full article, Make It Rare, HERE.

“…Researchers at Northern Arizona University worked with an international team to map where Western water starts and where it ends up in cities. It found that nearly half of all water consumption in the West either went directly to cows or watered crops to feed cows.

“‘We’re using a lot of water to grow the cows that are the source of our burgers, steaks and milk,’ Ben Ruddell, a study co-author and principal investigator, said in a press release. ‘In the Colorado River basin, that cattle feed water use is nearly three times greater than all the water used for urban, industrial and electrical power purposes combined.’

“But the study, published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability, also offers a solution: pay more farmers to leave fields temporarily dormant, or fallow….”

This article was originally published by Wyoming Public Media, view source here.

Posted in Archived News, FEWSION in the Media.