Can that be true? Why does generating electricity use more water than farming?

http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water/water_use_today.html

> Running an average refrigerator all day uses about as much water as a ten-minute shower

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-saving-energy-...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generat...

It uses it in the sense that water touches the machinery. But it doesn't use it in the sense of the water not being available anymore.

The water is used for cooling, but it's put right back in the river it came from and can be used again by another power plant, or for drinking water.

And most farming is for animal feed which is wasteful compared to consuming far less meat. We could reduce water usage significantly by reducing meat consumption. We should probably do this.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/...

Also

http://www.grub.com.au/News/FoodFacts/post/2013/02/06/In-Aus...

Unsurprisingly, when you concatenate these three things together, including both wool farming and wheat, two of the country's major exports, it does rise higher than cotton farming. It's like saying if you put the US, Mexico, and Brazil together, they're bigger than Canada.

Also, from your second link: To understand what’s going on we need to look more closely at the numbers.There are currently about 720,000 head of cattle in Australia’s feedlots, out of a national cattle herd of 28.5 million. This represents about 3%. So, however you look at it, the vast majority of cattle in Australia are grass-fed. <- This is the finishing I was talking about earlier, and the statement that the vast majority of beef doesn't use grazing is wrong.

True, but how do you know they didn't already make that adjustment? I can't find any reference in the original report.

"household water usage with a sewer system is a null usage. Reducing that does almost nothing - all the water used gets recycled downstream by the next city downriver"

Except in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and many other coastal cities, where the sewage outfall is in the ocean....

"...septic systems waste water."

Functioning septic systems don't store water. They drain it to a field, and it goes wherever any other form of runoff would go. I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that this is "wasteful".

That is true, and it's an opportunity. That water should be captured for farm use. However by the time the water got to those cites it has (hopefully) been used many times.

> Functioning septic systems don't store water. They drain it to a field, and it goes wherever any other form of runoff would go. I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that this is "wasteful".

Because no one can drink this water. Obviously on a global level water can't ever be wasted. So talking about water waste must necessarily be about available water. Runoff is a waste in that sense.

As it stands, the United States has about an order of magnitude more cropland than Spain[1].

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=farmland+in+united+stat...

Regardless, the United States has 1.4x as much cropland per capita, which already accounts for a good portion of the 1.8x increase in water usage per capita.

Is artificial irrigation used for growing grain in the US in any meaningful amount? Rain falling on crops shouldn't count towards "water usage", since the rain would just fall on other plants (e.g., grass or trees) in absence of farming.

http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/V...

There is substantial irrigation of grains but the majority of grain acres are not irrigated.