Almond Milk is Ruining the Environment!
At least, that is what many dairy farms want you to believe.
When I step into any grocery store or coffee shop around Campus West, it is hard to find somewhere that doesn’t have almond milk. It has been marketed as a healthy, environmentally friendly option — perfect for a college town. But recently, it has been all over the news and online forums that almond milk is actually worse for the environment than cows milk.
However, that isn’t the case at all. The claim of why dairy milk trumps almond milk is based on the amount of water that growing almonds requires.
California is the main producer of almonds in the United States, and they have been running into problems with using too much water.
“California supplies about 80% of the United States almonds, and dedicates 10%, or 80 million gallons, of its state’s water to grow the nut. To grow one almond requires 1.1 gallons of water, and to grow a pound takes 1,900 gal/ lb.” [1]
A gallon of water to grow just one almond seems like a lot, and 1,900 gallons per pound (roughly) is even more unbelievable. That statistic alone is what caused critics and dairy farmers alike to cause a major uproar around the consumption of almond milk.
Looking at the drought that California has been under for the past number of years, it seems that the solution to the drought would be to stop growing almonds for milk and just go back to the traditional staple of cows milk.
With California’s recent drought, it seems that a simple solution to conserve water would be to stop the production of almond milk. Just go back to cows milk.
However, that 1,900 gallons per pound for almonds is nothing in comparison to that of how much water is needed to produce just one pound of milk.
“[…] It takes up to 4.5 pounds of water to make just 1 pound of milk, and cows produce, on average, 70 pounds, or 8 gallons of milk each day.” [2]
That means that it takes (roughly) 315 pounds of water for a cow to produce that 8 gallons of milk per day.
“Cows need to consume between 30 and 50 gallons of water per day,” said Donna Amaral-Phillips, extension dairy specialist for the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. “That’s more than 415 pounds of water every day.” [2]
The issue is that both sources of ‘milk’ use a substantial amount of water. However, the combined research shows that dairy farms use a much larger percentage of water to produce dairy milk. These statistics also do not take into account the amount of water needed to produce the food that the dairy cows are fed such as grains, corn and grass.
“Almond milk requires 384 litres of water per litre, and cow’s milk requires 1016 liters of water to produce, which is 2.5x more water. Almond milk is less water intensive than dairy milk,” says Lindsay Miles. [3]
Another aspect of the almonds vs. cows debate is the issue of carbon footprint. “Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation.” [4]
In comparison to greenhouse emissions for animal agriculture, a study at Yale found that, 1 kilogram of almonds produces less than 1 kilogram of carbon emissions. This is in sharp contrast to beef, which causes more than 20 kilograms.
So when you head to King Soopers for milk, you do have a tough choice to make. But it is safe to say that while almond milk may not be the most sustainable source of ‘milk’, in comparison to traditional dairy milk it has a much smaller carbon footprint.
Sources
[1] Boehrer, K. (2014, October 13). Which Of Your Favorite Foods Are Hiding A Massive Water Footprint? Retrieved September 8, 2016
[2] https://www.dairyherd.com/article/whole-lot-water-goes-milk
[3] https://treadingmyownpath.com/2017/04/20/is-almond-milk-bad-for-the-planet/
[4] http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
[5] http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/the-other-side-of-almonds-a-light-carbon-footprint/