ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I'm not sure, but I think they also count the water used to raise the crops that the cow ate to drive the number up to a more impressive level.
Right, these are interesting numbers, but they don't seem relevant to water shortages unless we are talking about using water over/above natural rainfall (or diverting that rainfall for crops), and that also depends on the geographic area.
We never irrigated the corn or alfalfa or soybeans we grew. You don't see much in the way of irrigation in the Midwest. Maybe some for table crops, or maybe for crops being raised for seed for next year's crop. If corn doesn't get water at some specific times during pollination and cob development, the yield can go way down - some added water at those times could make a huge difference, and seed crops are much higher value (and smaller overall acreage) than feed crops.
But it does make sense to include the water used on crops to feed the meat we eat - we could just eat the crops.
-ERD50