(yes, it even uses less water in water-scarce places)
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2023
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Yeah, though it's worth pointing out here again that dairy milk is still worse in that regard in those regions:
One graph even has California's animal feed water usage so large it actually goes off the chart at 15.2 million acre-feet of water (it is distorted to make it fit as it notes). For some comparison, the blue water usage of animal feed is larger than all of almonds water usage of ~2 million acre-feet of water
https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf#page=25
Pastures themselves are often in areas that don't receive much rainfall and need watering. For example, one chart from 2003 put California's water usage just for pastures higher than crops from human consumption. Since then the rankings may have changed a tiny bit, but the water usage is still enormous just on pastures alone
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/California-Total-Water-Use-by-Crop-2003_fig3_294579954
Oh absolutely. I'm just saying that in ways other than water use almond milk is actually better than a lot of other plant based milks. It's just the combination of high water use and being mostly grown in an area suffering from a major water shortage that makes other plant based milks a clearly better choice if they're practical for you. It's still better than cow milk though.
Certainly, that's what I thought you were saying, but I just wanted to clarify for others as well