How Much Water Is In YOUR Food?

How water goes into your food?

According to Mother Jones, not known for being a pro-Ag website, says it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow ONE almond. That is one almond, not one pound of almonds! And, we eat a lot of almonds.

 You can look it up on the February 24, 2014 article in Mother Jones.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-water-going

   The article also shows how one tomato takes 3.3 gallons of water to produce and a head of broccoli takes 5.3 gallons of water to produce. Other sources show it takes 8 gallons of water to produce a single orange.

     Look at it this way, one report shows it takes over 4,500 gallons of water to produce ONE lunch of a hamburger, fries and a soda. We can argue the merits of that choice for lunch, but the point is over 30 million Californians had lunch today! That is a lot of water and that is only one meal on one day!

   You can take a food and water quiz on the US Geological Survey website-

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/sc1.html

   Can you figure out how much water each of those items take?

   Now one thing the Mother Jones article misses is the consequences of our short-sighted policies. The writers in Mother Jones say, Oh Well, that food production will just move to other states. Really? If they could grow what we grow wouldn't they already be doing it?

    We have talked before about how the San Joaquin Valley has one of five Mediterranean growing areas in the world, and the only one in North America. If we do not solve this problem, and solve it fast, we are not going to export our food production to Kansas, we are going to export our food production, those jobs and control of our food supply overseas.

   The bottom line is we all have a stake in solving our water issues. This is not an Ag problem only.
    Farmers are not the end users of the irrigation water we use. If you eat in California you are part of the equation. We are all in this together.