Thirsty Burgers

How beef-heavy diets threaten water in the West

Photo cby Lomig on Unsplash

Whether you’re chomping on burgers in Portland or Seattle, or eating a steak in Los Angeles or Denver, the beef production needed for these meals is depleting our rivers in the West.

For many of us living in western states, threats of drought and water scarcity are ever-present. We know to use water wisely and conserve when we can. But there’s one big aspect of water use that we need to talk about — meat production.

A landmark new study in Nature Sustainability, “Water Scarcity and Fish Imperilment Driven by Beef Production,” connects beef production to water scarcity and threats to wildlife. The facts are that beef and dairy come with an enormous carbon, methane, manure and water footprint.

More than 50 species of fish in the West, like the little Colorado sucker, the spikedace, and the speckled chub, are at an elevated risk of extinction due to irrigation of feed crops for cattle. Waterways, and the wild plants and animals who depend on this habitat, are threatened by wasteful water consumption needed to raise cattle.

Photo by Sarah Vombrack on Unsplash

People don’t often associate the environmental cost of beef with feed crops but that’s where a big part of the footprint comes from: It takes a heck of a lot of plants to feed cows. Growing these crops to feed cattle and feed our appetite for beef and dairy accounts for 23 percent of all water consumption in the United States. In the Colorado River basin, it accounts for more than half of consumed water.

Irrigation of crops like alfalfa, corn and soy that feed cattle uses the most river water in the western states, where waterways are already severely depleted. In California, Nevada, and other arid states, these feed crops drain drought-stricken deserts.

Meanwhile, pastureland grown for grazing livestock is also one of the largest sources of water consumption, using up about 2.7 trillion gallons of water per year in irrigation. And, pasture, though not as degraded as massive feedlots where cattle are fattened up before slaughter, is not biodiverse habitat.

Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash

Raising cattle in the arid West makes little ecological sense. Grazing cattle requires large-scale economic and environmental subsidies. The price of beef consumption in the West includes draining our rivers and degrading aquatic ecosystems, and that price is too steep to be sustainable.



People who live in the western cities need to know that beef is not only warming the planet at a global level but also draining our iconic river basins dry and endangering ecosystems right in our backyard.

And with that knowledge we need to start changing what we eat.

Most people probably don’t make the connection between their burger or beef burrito and the devastated landscape and impacts on wildlife, but this new report shows the connections are direct.

We must reduce our beef consumption at the individual and systemic level — from reducing purchasing of beef for school and government programs to swapping out beef for beans on our own plates.

So many plant-based alternatives are available these days. Supermarkets, particularly in these areas, contain an even wider variety of alternatives to beef burgers, from soy to pea to bean and beyond.

Popular new brands like Impossible and Beyond burgers are available at nearly all the major fast-food trends. The plant-forward movement has meant that, combining concerns with health, animal welfare and environmental concerns, major restaurants have multiple plant-based options, even at meat-heavy venues that would make a cattleman happy.

This begins with people in urban and suburban areas connecting their urban and suburban diets to lands beyond the pale, and the native wildlife and habitats not far away who get a little bit drier, and a little bit less healthy, with every serving of beef — or dairy — on our plates.