Almond Almonds Everywhere
hi, and welcome back to modvegan. my name's margaret, and today i want to talkwith you about almonds. [intro] almonds have been a big issue in the newslately, especially almond milk, which has been seen as a great consumer of water. a lot of people in the vegan community, outsidethe vegan community, in the news - have been mentioning how much water it takes to producealmonds, and questioning whether we should actually be drinking almond milk. so, i'd like to address the issue of almondmilk itself, also almonds, and look at how
the dairy industry compares with the almondmilk industry and the almond industry. so, first of all, how much water does it actuallytake to grow almonds? you may have heard that it takes 1 gallonof water to produce 1 almond. that it means it takes 1920 gallons of water (more or less) to produce a pound of almonds. which is quite a bit of water. ...until you start comparing it with othercrops, especially crops produced in california. as you're going to see in this chart, whathappens is that almonds (up there at the top) - they do take quite a bit of water, but notas much as rice, and not nearly as much as
most pasture grasses, like alfalfa. alfalfa takes nearly 3x as much water, andalfalfa is a chief source of food for dairy cows. so, we can see from this chart that alfalfatakes quite a bit more water, and almonds do take less. but, of course, dairy cows do not always consumealfalfa, they consume a variety of different products, however 70% of the alfalfa grownin california goes to feed dairy cows. which is not an insignificant number. in order to produce a gallon of dairy milk,it requires 880 gallons of water.
which is actually quite a bit less than the1920 gallons it takes to produce a pound of almonds. but that's only if we are using a pound ofalmonds to create a gallon of almond milk, which is not true. i just did a calculation on the brand almondbreeze, and for a gallon of almond breeze, it takes about 69 almonds. which shows you...there was actually a lawsuitrecently where people were suing the large almond milk manufacturers because there wereso little almonds in their almond milk. so, when you're drinking almond milk (especiallyif it's commercially prepared) you're not
getting a lot of almonds in your almond milk. if you like the flavour of almonds and youlike the flavour of almond milk, then you might be very happy with commercially preparedalmond milk. if you are, you don't need to feel guiltyabout it at all. it takes about 69 gallons of water to producea gallon of almond milk, which is 1/12th as much as is required for dairy milk. so, you're consuming 1/12th as much water. you don't need to feel terribly guilty aboutthat. that's good news!
1/12th as much water. so, we've established that at least commerciallyprepared almond milk takes a lot less water than dairy milk. but that's only one aspect of this equation. you also have to consider the amount of wasteproduced by dairy farms. a dairy farm with 2,500 cows produces as muchwaste as a city with 411,000 people. which is quite a few people! quite a great deal of waste, and this wasteis not treated in a conventional manner, the way we would treat human waste, and so itjust kind of flows underground, they use it
to fertilize crops, but there's a great dealof runoff, and it goes into the groundwater and can cause disease, pollution, all sortsof problems. but in addition to that, there's also theproblem of irrigation. i found a really interesting paper by a fellowat university of california davis, i'm going to put a link in the description box belowto his paper. but it's about different irrigation methodsand talks about the reasons why he is arguing, basically, that california should pursue morehigh-profit produce, like almonds, and abandon dairy, because dairy produces a great dealof runoff and there's nothing that can really be done to improve the irrigation of alfalfa.
the way alfalfa is grown, you have to waterit from above, and so this causes a great deal of evaporation. most of the water that goes to watering alfalfais wasted, because it has to be poured from above. a great deal of it evaporates and very littleactually gets to the roots of the plant. the plant itself gives off a great deal ofwater, and so it's not very efficient. and for that reason, it's problematic. now, almond groves do not always use the mostefficient forms of irrigation, but they could. the best forms of drip irrigation can be used- you can see if you go ahead and look at
hanson's paper - you can see how the dripirrigation can work on an almond farm so that there is less water wasted. so that's something that could be implementedand could reduce the amount of water that is required for almonds even further. i've put the link in the description box - thispaper is by dr. blaine hanson of university of california davis, it's a fascinating paperand if you're interested in agriculture, in water usage, i strongly recommend that youcheck this out. something else that i think we should be thinkingabout is how much almonds cost. if you go and buy a gallon of milk, i'm notexactly sure what the price is in the states,
but here in canada it's about $5 cdn for agallon of milk. i think it's even less in the states - i couldbe wrong, but i'm assuming that it's somewhere around $5 for a gallon of milk if you're buyingnon-organic milk - conventional milk. milk is obviously subsidized, alfalfa is subsidizedfor these farmers too, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford it. so if you start thinking about it, when you'rebuying almonds, you think about the price you're paying for almonds per pound - it'ssignificantly higher. i don't really know exactly how much almondsare per pound in the united states, but they are significantly more expensive than milk,especially when you consider the amount of
pollution required in order to produce almondsvs. dairy milk. so, there's less pollution and there's lesswaste, and there's not as much subsidies surround almonds either. from the point of view of the government,it costs less to raise almonds, and if consumers are willing to pay for almond milk that isonly 2% almonds, then it makes a lot of sense to let those people drink almond milk instead,and actually to encourage them to drink almond milk. of course, one of the other arguments that'smade about almond milk - and almonds in general - is that a lot of bees are used for almondproduction.
and this is absolutely true. bees are necessary in order to pollinate almondgroves, and we do send bees to california in droves in order to be able to pollinatethe fruit trees there. but if you are vegan, this is one of thosekind of prickly points of difficulty. if you are a vegan, you're consuming fruitsand vegetables every single day that use bees, and it's just something that currently can'tbe done in any other way. i do think in the future we are going to beable to figure out ways of pollinating that do not require bees, but at this point, wedo. if you want to help bees, you can eat lesshoney, or not eat honey - be a vegan and stop
consuming honey because personally, i seeno reason in taking their natural food source away from them. most bee farmers need to supplement theirbees with things like sugar water, which are not as good for the bees, if they take theirhoney away (they have to feed them something else if they've taken too much of their honey). i do think that being vegan and not eatinghoney is a better way to help the bees than stopping eating fruits and vegetables, becausethat's not going to work very well. and there are only a few fruits and vegetablesin the world that don't require honeybees. if you decided to give up all products thatused honeybees, you'd pretty much be left
with nothing to eat. and so, i think the best thing to do is, dowhat you can - i think this is where you enter into the "all that is possible and practicable"like, the basic definition of veganism. you want to be doing what you can, but notwhat you can't. and so, you can't be a very effective advocatefor veganism if you're dying of scurvy because you don't eat fruits and vegetables. so, please eat your fruits and vegetables. and don't feel guilty if you want to drinkalmond milk. personally, i drink soy milk, just 'causei like soy milk better, but honestly, there's
nothing wrong with almond milk. it's actually a good argument for drinkingcommercially prepared almond milk, because even though it's a rip-off and it only contains2% almonds - it also only contains 2% almonds! so you're not eating a lot of almonds andit's going to be better for the environment, because it uses less water than say, if youmake homemade almond milk, you're going to be using a lot more almonds. i used to make my own almond milk and i usedabout a cup of almonds for 6 cups of water, so that would be 6 oz of almonds, which isquite a bit more almonds than you'd be getting in conventional almond milk.
so, yeah, it would end up being quite a few- like 18 oz of almonds - nearly a pound to produce a gallon of almond milk if you weremaking it at home - which is a lot more almonds, a lot more water. so if you're going to drink almond milk, it'sprobably best to buy the commercially prepared stuff, it's got all your calcium and othernutrients, so if you're comfortable doing that, that's a really good way to go. eating almonds as a snack - most vegans arenot eating pounds of almonds. if you're eating pounds of almonds, you mightwant to think about that, because they are a water-intensive crop.
but other than that, unless you're just eatingthem willy-nilly, which i doubt, because almonds are so expensive now. i really don't think we need to feel bad aboutthis, and this is something that has been drummed up, in my opinion, by other industriesto make us not realize what the real elephant in the room is, and that is the dairy industry. the dairy industry in california is usingtons of water, they're growing these alfalfa crops in a very inefficient way, they can'tgrow them in a more efficient way. so, it's very harmful to the environment,it's unnecessary, and it's cruel. and that's what we should be focusing on.
the government of california and the governmentof the united states is spending all this money to subsidize dairy farms, when whatthey should be doing, is telling people to do is to seek out vegan alternatives. i hope that is what will happen in the future. and if someone tries to make you feel guiltyabout drinking almond milk, you can remind them that there is less than 2% almonds inyour conventional, grocery store bought almond milk, and that they can stop drinking milkand eating cheese if they're really concerned about water waste. i hope this gives you a little bit of ammunitionin case someone comes across you and starts
trying to pick on you for eating almonds. anyway, thank you so much. have a great day, and i will see you soon. if you liked this video, please give it athumbs up, please subscribe that will be wonderful!
