I was wondering about that. Not sure what the breakdown is between feed for livestock vs veggies, fruit, nuts, etc.
Our World in Data has good data about this, although it's not specific to the Colorado River. Nuts do need a lot of freshwater to grow, but have a very low carbon footprint, land use footprint, and eutrophying emissions footprint.
Animal products, especially cow/lamb meat, and dairy have a very high environmental footprint in all categories (and prawns in all categories except land use), whereas peas and pulses have one of the lowest footprints in all categories.
Data for water use:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-per-protein-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freshwater-withdrawals-per-1000kcal
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-withdrawals-per-kg-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-protein-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-use-kcals
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-per-kg-poore
Data for land use:
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
Data for carbon emissions:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-kg-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-opportunity-costs-per-kilogram-of-food
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-chain
Data for eutrophying emissions:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eutrophying-emissions-protein
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eutrophying-emissions-kcal
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eutrophying-emissions-per-kg-poore
And additional to intensive water usage needed for beef production and the eutrophying pollution from fertilizers used in feed production, the animal industry further contaminates water sources by improperly disposing of manure
https://shunwaste.com/article/what-forms-of-pollution-is-produced-from-livestock-beef-prodction
@katlin I appreciate all of the articles, however https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets this is the worst - it really doesn't get much of anything. You don't have to convert to a high quality protein if you already have. Also our guts have bioreactors, so we don't need external ones. Carbohydrates are known to help amino acids get to muscles to build them. So without that - it's actually a worse quality protein.
The only part they got right is that what is fed to livestock will be insufficient to humans. That's agreed - we're not livestock. Once we get away from animal agriculture - there's way more nutrient-rich foods than what's mass produced out there for humans if we prioritize that.
That and the part about saving a lot of land - that we just don't need to worry about for crops.
Well we don't need land to grow crops. It just talked too much back and forth.
I think that all the article is saying here is that cereals alone are not enough for a balanced diet, and it mentions ways to achieve a diverse and balanced vegan diet, such as mixing cereals with legumes and taking vitamin B12 supplements. I understood that the key point here from an agricultural point of view is that we can't rely on cereal monocultures for our nutritional needs but need to plant more crops like peas, beans, lentils to enable balanced and sustainable diets.
@katlin peas sure are great for the environment and taste great too. I like the idea of taking up upon them. But they're not native to the US that I know of, so pumpkin seeds is another option. Potatoes are nice too.
Nuts really are a challenge. Allergenic, anti-nutrients, requires soaking at times (even more water), etc. Sometimes they're just not even as nutritious as smaller plant seeds like flax and chia. Peas too.
Yes, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and chia seeds are all great too!
@katlin I'd say the lowest water footprint of any seed for protein is pumpkin. You get not just a low water needing seed, but a whole big fruit to go with it! That's substantial to me.
Look - compared to animal products - just about anything has a low footprint, but that's a really low bar to set.
If we look at nuts - it depends how it's grown that counts as much as the need. There's dry farming - but the issue is that it just doesn't produce much. There's non-bee pollination but same issue.
I see nuts as a great source of nutrients but they can't be the main source of protein in a sustainable diet. For this we need beans, lentils, peas, and seeds!
My reasoning is based on both the anti-nutrients you already mentioned as well as the large water consumption of large-scale nut production in water-stressed regions. There are nuts which can be harvested in regions which are not water-stressed, but can this be scaled up to meet national or global demand as a main source of protein? I just think logistically it would be much more challenging than beans, lentils, peas, and seeds, but I would be happy to be proven wrong!
GaryRLundberg
Crystal Zenith
