Food's Water Footprint
Countless column inches have been written recently about present and potential global water shortages. What has not always been spelled out is that some of the problems are caused by the water we use to produce our food.
One person looking closely at the ways in which food production and consumption will impact on the availability of water in the future is Professor Tim Lang of City University London. Talking to the Daily Telegraph, Professor Lang said, "The threat to Britain's food chain from its water footprint is just as great as its carbon footprint." He added that people need to be more aware of the way farmers and food factories all use water to produce staples such as meat, coffee and milk.
"Huge amounts of water are being used as irrigation or fed directly to animals. It is a nightmare. Water stress is huge across huge swathes of the globe. We think that we are liberally supplied by God's water. But that's not true."
Sanjay Guha, president of Coca Cola Great Britain, also admitted in the Independent on Sunday: "Water is the most important ingredient in all our beverages. It is essential for the production of sugar and other crops we rely on. Without it, we simply don't have a business."
Professor Lang, who is a senior government food adviser, who was the first to use the term "food miles," is currently working with a team at City University London on a system that will help us formulate diets that are nutritious, ethical and sustainable. This might include, for example, making it easy to see whether "a Fair Trade banana from Costa Rica is as 'sustainable' as a lamb shank from Wales, or a high-fat ready meal." In order to avoid what Professor Lang described as the "almost unthinkable" options of rationing and direct government intervention, he suggested supermarkets and government encourage voluntary "editing" of our diets.
Discussion questions: Is the food industry doing enough to address the growing problem of global water shortages? How should retailers be responding, especially as consumer awareness rises around the impact of food production methods?
[Author's commentary] The Telegraph article also points out that the World Wide Fund calculates one pint of milk uses up more than 550 litres (968 pints) of water (the equivalent of running six full baths) while one cup of coffee needs 140 litres (246 pints).