Explainer: How Water Intensive Is Animal Farming?

The largest saltwater lake in the world is on the verge of collapse. Thanks to excessive water use, the Great Salt Lake in Utah is now reaching perilously low levels, with scientists and conservationists alike sounding the alarm.

Fluctuating between 1,000 and 3,000 square miles over much of its history, the lake once teemed with life — plants, brine shrimp, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and shorebirds were all flourishing. Since 1850 however, Utah’s Great Salt Lake has shrunk by 60 percent — losing 73 percent of its water. These losses have made the lake saltier and increasingly inhospitable to native wildlife.

There are risks to humans too — agriculture and other human activities have caused pollutants like arsenic, lead and selenium to accumulate in the lakebed, which would create a toxic mix of dust if the lake were to dry out completely.

The culprit of all this water loss? Meat. Since the 1990s, the streamflow that replenishes the lake has been excessively diverted to irrigate fields of crops used to feed livestock. In fact, three quarters of water use from the Great Salt Lake watershed goes to grow feed for livestock animals, with another 5-10 percent lost to storage and transport of water along the way.

The main feed crop grown in Utah is water-intensive alfalfa — the state produces just under two million tons of this thirsty crop annually. And that harvest requires a lot of water: just one acre of alfalfa sucks up between 100,000 and 200,000 gallons each year.

Crops to Feed Beef and Dairy Cows Are Sucking Up All The Water

The problem isn’t limited to Utah. Twenty-six million acres of alfalfa are grown and cut for hay in the U.S each year, particularly in the western U.S., an area still experiencing severe drought. According to a 2020 Nature Sustainability study, across the 17 western states where production is concentrated, alfalfa accounts for a whopping 20 percent of all river water consumption, making it the biggest recipient of water in the western region.

Rampant water use to grow alfalfa for beef and dairy farms points to “beef and dairy consumption” as “the leading driver of water shortages and fish imperilment in the region,” the study finds. It connects water scarcity in the Colorado River Basin to high levels of beef consumption in Los Angeles, Portland, Denver and San Francisco. Indeed, most of these feed crops go to domestic beef and dairy production.

Still, the U.S is exporting increasing amounts of feed crops too — particularly to China where demand for meat is on the rise. In 2021, alfalfa hay exports reached a record of 2.86 million metric tons.

Most of the alfalfa and other feed crops go to feed beef. According to the Nature study, a whopping two-thirds of these crops grown in the western U.S. are used to produce this red meat, with the remaining third going to dairy cows. In the U.S., 95 percent of cattle is fattened on grain, silage and hay for the last 160 to 180 days of their lives — which amounts to around 25 to 30 percent of their lifespan. Most dairy cows, by contrast, spend their whole lives indoors or in feedlots, fed a mix of grasses and irrigated crops such as alfalfa, corn and soy.

Climate Costs of Beef and Dairy in a Mega-Drought

Feed crops are not the only reason these farms are so water-intensive. The beef and dairy industries also use a lot of water directly, though this accounts for a much smaller proportion of their overall water use. Still, in both the western states and the U.S. as a whole, just watering livestock accounts for 2 percent of overall water consumption.

With the southwestern United States experiencing a mega-drought, using so much precious water for feed crops is becoming increasingly untenable, researchers say. As Jack Schmidt, a professor and director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, told the Guardian, ““We’re irrigating alfalfa in 120-degree temperatures in the dead of July … how does that possibly make any sense?”

Author: Claire Hamlett

Claire is a freelance writer focused on animals, climate, and the environment. She is a regular contributor to Surge Activism and an Associate Editor at Sentient Media.

Credits: This article by Claire Hamlett, https://sentientmedia.org, is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.