California produces almost all the almonds eaten in the United States, indeed, the world (80% of the world's supply).
It does not produce that much beef or chicken.
Thus.
It does not produce that much beef or chicken.
Thus.
Texas is #1 with 11m head of cattle. California is #4 at 5m.
632 lbs production per head * 5.2m cattle = 1.6m tons.
US production of almonds = 1.4m tons.
You can't reason about amounts merely by looking at normalized numbers. Billion dollar company X is growing 2% a year, and million dollar company Y is growing 5% a year. Only in normalized numbers is one more than the other. In absolute numbers this is not the case.
California is #5, containing 5.7% (down a fair bit from a year ago) of all cattle in the US.
What exactly are you calling untrue?
(Note that California cattle are not anywhere close in absolute water use either.)
Pointing out that California is the fourth largest US state in cattle doesn't even approach contradicting that (indeed, its pretty good evidence that it is not as dominant of a beef provider as an almond provider.)
Now, if you want to argue that the claim about share of the world almond market is irrelevant and that what we should compare is the water demand of California's almond supply vs. the water demand of beef/chicken, that's a different point. But you shouldn't criticize the parent poster for presenting their belief as fact, and then counter with a fact claim that doesn't even contradict the fact claim they presented.
It produces quite a bit of beef.
A percentage is not an amount or measurement of production.
I don't live in California, but lets assume that the percentage of American beef that California produces matches up with the percentage of the beef I eat that is from California. I think that is more than generous.
So 5.7% of the beef I eat is Californian. The majority of the rest is raised in areas with their own independent water supplies.
Let's assume that the percentage of almonds that are from California matches up with the percentage of the world's almonds that are Californian. This is more than generous, as I wager exceptionally few of the almonds that I eat are imported, since the US exports almonds...
So 80% of the almonds that I eat are Californian.
If you want to defend almond-eating and condemn my beef-eating, those statistics are going to be a problem for you.
California could completely ban all cows within California and ban the export of Alfalfa for all I care. The price increase would not particularly bother me. If California halted production of almonds, I don't think almond-eaters would be very happy at all. For the record, I would support California doing both.
Percentages of different things cannot be compared sanely.
Think about it, which harms California's water supply more? A New Yorker drinking a gallon of cow's milk? Or a New Yorker drinking a gallon of almond milk?
Look, according to Slate, almonds use 1.1 trillion gallons of water per year in CA.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...
There are 5,000,000ish head of cattle in CA. This thing:
http://www.uaex.edu/publications/pdf/fsa-3021.pdf
suggests that the most water that any cow needs per day is 20 gallons. 20 x 365 x 5million = 36.5 billion gallons of water per year. Let's assume that that's holy shit an order of magnitude low, and it's 365 billion gallons of water per year -- so it's still only 1/3rd the amount of water that almonds use.
And thus, we talk about the amount of water that almonds use.
California's reservoirs don't care about gaming numbers about "gallons per calorie", they care about how many gallons are used where.
And the simple fact is that almond production uses many, many, many, many more gallons of California water than cattle production does.
Water was cheap there and in no danger of running short, so I got the impression that there was as much as you wanted to pay for. Which meant he'd often relax by standing in the shower drinking a beer.
Back home, councils were handing out water-saving shower heads, people could only water their gardens on alternating days, emptying dams made the news, etc.