Part 1: From land to sea, though not forgetting freshwater, rivers and streams.

Water Usage and consumption

The more direct and obvious effect of animal agriculture on our environments is the physical use and consumption of water use and comsuption of water essentially used to

Water is needed for the livestock to survive and grow but water is also used to grow feed for these animals. This explains the rather striking statistics on global water consumption where an average of 55 trillion gallons of water are used annualy  for animal agriculture ( an average of it ranging from 34 to 76 trillion gallions). Similarly, to produce one pound of beef, equivalent to your weekly cheese burger, an average of 2500 gallons fo water are needed.

Considering how these statistics only touch on the direct consumption of water that impacts our environment, what other more indirect effects does livestock farming have on our aquatic environments and habitats?

This post represents the first of my ‘water blogpost series’ where I move away from land environments to investigate freshwater and ocean environments in greater detail.

For the first post of this series, I felt it would be particularly interesting to look at how the physical presence of cattle near a water stream can impact water quality. A recent 2014 peer reviewed article (Benskin et al , 2014) examines how cattle in-steam presence has potential impact on Suspended Solid Concentrations (small particles often found in suspension in water bodies due to the movement and flows of water)  which are used as indicators of good water quality. Presence and movements of cattle in streams moved streamed storage around and re-suspend previously deposited sediment loads within the stream thus changing its water quality. In this study, the use of a high resolution water quality data collection showed that 58% of SSC events, where an increase in sediment load was recorded, were accounted for by cattle in-stream presence. Thus it underlined how cattle grazing near a stream and their presence had a considerable impact on water pollution, through changes in nutrients within the water.