this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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You're going to shit your pants when you see how much water is used to grow vegetables
Vegetables grown for human consumption are many times less water-intensive than meat.
True.
The point however is that we're growing a lot more vegetables, because we need the food.
Human water consumption is also higher than data center consumption, the conclusion should be that the chart is dumb, not that we should kill humans to support data centers.
Yes, and the total quantity of water used to grow vegetables is significantly higher
What are you comparing against? Only the water drank by cattle? That's laughably ignorant.
It doesn't matter if you go by weight, volume, or calories - eating plants is a ton less water-intensive than feeding it to cattle raised for slaughter.
Ok dude, you've strayed way off topic. I'm not arguing against you at all. The chart in the post is comparing the water used in the entire US cattle industry against AI water usage. My point is that the total amount of water used to grow vegetables for human consumption in the US would dwarf that beef bar, and this chart is dumb.
depending on how you define "vegetable" this could be argued i think.
Plants for human consumption.
so does that mean we should be comparing it to water usage for all animal agriculture instead of just one specific "crop" of livestock?
Jesus, the point is that the chart is dumb. Comparing water used in beef production to water used in data centers is dumb. You could make the same chart with water to grow corn or soybeans or chickens and it will still be dumb
And a shit load of the vegetables grown are feed for livestock, as well as corn for biofuel for cars (in the States, at least).
Sorry I don't have time to find any solid numbers.
I don't really expect to reach you with this, but it's worth a try - https://slrpnk.net/comment/23703343
People think I'm somehow defending eating meat when I'm just saying that growing food of any kind takes a lot of water, and the comparison in this chart is dumb
What, pray tell, do you think cattle eat friendo?
You're going to shit your pants when you see how much water is used to grow vegetables for human consumption.
The point being this chart is dumb, because of course we use water to grow food, because we only eat life and life requires water, and comparing this stat to data center water usage makes no sense. And of course beef uses significantly more water to raise than an equal caloric amount of vegetables, but the amount of water used to grow vegetables for human consumption still dwarfs the amount of water used to raise cattle. Why not throw that on the chart too?
You really thought people were going to understand that convoluted point with that comment? Bruh.
You're going to shit your pants when you see how much water we use to grow vegetables
Im gonna shit in your pants if you dont stop.
Grain, the sort we don't eat.
Do you think the average beef cattle is eating a Caesar salad?
No. Thats my point. The grain we dont eat uses water to grow. Water that would otherwise be used to grow food we do eat.
This is why beef uses more water than veggies.
If a cow can eat it, so can we.
If we don't want to eat it, we're choosing to feed cows with that land instead of people.
Some things really are a zero sum game.
Yeah but we eat these. We don't feed animals and torture them to then eat them.