According to Analytical Technology, it takes 650 liters of water to produce 1 pound of wheat, 2500 liters of water to produce enough meat for a burger, and 4650 liters to produce a 300g beef steak. The substantial increase in animal agriculture has caused water shortages in areas where high volumes of crops and animal products are exported. India, the USA, and Australia are three examples where water shortages have arrived due to embedded water, thus resulting in wide-scale conversation efforts. It is estimated that the use of water for agricultural production globally amounts to over 6,000 billion cubic meters per year, which includes irrigation and soil water. This indicates that at every second, 200 million liters of water is used to grow food. Statistically, it has been shown that meat products vs. non-meat products have a much higher level of embedded water per kilogram. For one gram of beef, 16,000 liters of water are used in the process. (http://www.atiuk.com/blog/virtual-water-flows).
According to the Water Footprint Network, having a water footprint can be calculated for an individual person, a process, a product's value chain for a business, river basin, or a nation. This information is important in understanding the water-related risk of utilizing products and materials for things we use in our every day lives. By doing so, this helps governments to help identify their role of water in the economy and water dependency, and for customers to understand just exactly how much water they use. The most important thing water footprints are used for is to help drive strategic action toward sustainable, efficient, and equitable water usage (http://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/what-is-water-footprint/).
The documentary "Cowspiracy" discusses how the animal agriculture business is what is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and air pollution, and the responsibility of giving off more greenhouse gases than transportation. In the film, he discusses what might occur if we don't start taking better control of our water and carbon footprint. The director discusses how becoming a vegan, someone who doesn't eat any meat, eggs, or dairy, is able to take control of what is destroying our planet (http://www.cowspiracy.com/about/).
Embedded water, or virtual water, is described as mainly usage from domestic, industrial, and agricultural aspects. Domestic usage is consisted of things such as washing the dishes, taking a shower, cooking,etc. This aspect consumes about 137 liters a day on average. Industrial usage of water consists of making and wearing materials such as cotton, paper, clothes, etc. This aspect of embedded water uses about 167 liters of water a day. Lastly, animal agriculture uses almost 3496 liters of water each day, which is almost 26 times the amount of water we normally use in our homes.
On average, in the industrial beef production system, there is an average of about 3 years until the cow is slaughtered. During those three years, a cow will consume nearly 1300 kilograms of grains. This amount of grain consumed by the cow is almost 306000 liters of water. 92% of the water we use is used in the production of food (http://www.angelamorelli.com/water/).
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