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Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

It's too broad of a brush to say 'agriculture.' Clearly, some withdrawals have a greater impact than others. Withdrawing from aquifers in arid areas has a greater long-term impact than water from rivers in wet areas.

Wisconsin produces lots of cheese. Are they using water faster than it's being replaced?

Ocean seafood I have to imagine uses near-zero fresh water.

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You would think so, but this is actually completely wrong. Prawns and fish use the most freshwater per calorie of any food https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress. My point about cows reinforces the point on inequality of impact- the Colorado River is vulnerable and arid, yet we waste this water on cows.

Well, not all fish and shrimp are produced in fresh water, many are produced in salt water (aka, the ocean).

But, It's also likely that most of these farmed fresh water foods are in areas with highly renewable freshwater resources (SE Asia, US South), rather than arid locations.

The map titled "Freshwater withdrawals as a share of internal resources, 2022" shows that SE Asia withdraws a fraction of their renewable freshwater every year.

> Colorado River is vulnerable and arid, yet we waste this water on cows.

Define 'waste.' Producing cows creates food. Rain-grown corn from the mid west is fed to the cows. What should we do with the water from the Colorado River otherwise?

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