Open Letter to Dr Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization

Dear Dr. Diouf,

In a press release dated 21 March 2005 and titled 'Water for Life', the FAO referred to 'appropriate policies needed to make better use of water' because it 'takes one tonne of water to produce one kilogram of wheat'.

The European Vegetarian Union wants to point out that the water requirement for the production of meat is even very much higher and therefore well worth mentioning.

Already last April, the Stockholm International Water Institute declared "that agriculture will need huge amounts of additional water. Water for agriculture is therefore going to be a BIG issue in the next few decades." 1)

In their 2004-report "The global benefits of eating less meat" 2), the Compassion in World Farming Trust explains: "In his book, Cadillac Desert: the American West and its disappearing water, Marc Reisner argues that a pound of beef requires 20 to 80 times more water than the 100 to 250 gallons needed to produce 1 lb of corn. New Scientist (18 May 2002) quotes a 1998 study in Forbes magazine stating that it takes 50,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of beefsteak. David Pimentel, a water resource specialist at Cornell University, believes this to be a considerable underestimate and puts the figure at 100,000 litres of water per kilo of beef (compared to 500 l for 1 kilo of potatoes, 900 l for wheat and alfalfa, 1100 l for sorghum, 1400 l for maize, 1910 l for rice, and 2000 l for soya beans).

In this context it is worth mentioning that a large percentage of the global grain harvest is not destined for hungry people but is fed to animals. The same is true for 90 percent of Brazil’s soya beans which are grown by destroying large parts of rain forests.

FAO declared that the "agriculture sector faces a complex challenge" and listed a series of feasible improvements. Unfortunately neither a reduction in meat consumption nor vegetarianism is under scrutiny or even discussed. This omission is very regrettable since, in the quest for a more sustainable and humane diet, "one person’s 100 per cent reduction can help to ‘subsidise’ 6 people who haven’t yet reduced their meat consumption at all." 2)

The European Vegetarian Union appeals to you personally to consider new promising alternatives and have vegetarianism, a compassionate and beneficial way of life, now seriously investigated.

Thank you very much.