Agribusiness

Agribusiness is the wholesale food industry, including petrochemical industries, seed, equipment manufacturers, grain, livestock feed, pet food industries, pharmaceuticals, corporate farms, and contract growers. It is an eighty billion dollar a year industry.

The United States uses the most water of any country in the world for food production, including the raising of animals for consumption. The U.S. uses 85 percent of the total water supply. Per capita, each person indirectly uses 2500 gallons of water a day (a vegetarian uses 300 gallons). Agribusiness has led to the increase in the number of areas that are harmed by livestock.. Examples of the impact of livestock on the land include livestock trampling cottonwood seedlings at the Missouri River. Livestock can also poison water supplies because of the use of toxaphene. Between forty and one hundred million pounds of toxaphene areused annually by farmers to rid livestock of external parasites. It is a chemical that is related to DDT, aldrin, and dieldrin. The toxin causes liver cancer in laboratory mice and thyroid cancer in rats and has killed cattle. Toxaphene has been found in water supplies, fish-eating birds, milk, market-basket food, catfish and other commercial fish. Livestock also add to ground water depletion.

The use of water for irrigation agriculture has tripled since 1940. Groundwater now supplies about 25 percent of all water in the US and forty percent of irrigation water.

Federally supplied water has been a creator and catalyst for agricultural wealth. 60 million acres of land is irrigated in the United States, five sixths of this is in the seventeen western states and twenty percent of that is irrigated directly by the Bureau of Reclamation. Most of California's $16 billion in agricultural wealth is due to irrigation which helps winter wheat and livestock as well as other crops.

Tulare Lake was the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi. Now, all that remains is cropland because the Corp of Engineers dammed the four rivers flowing into the river. As more cropland appeared and more irrigation appeared, farmers grew rich off the federally subsidized irrigation and added more land by pumping water using their newfound wealth.

The majority of water consumption in the west is used for watering lawns and crops. In California, agriculture uses about ninety percent of the water supply and Los Angeles uses about eight percent. Though the west is strained water-wise, population growth will not stress the water supply because the amount agriculture uses is enormous compared to urban usage. Water use in the west is mainly for low-value crops.

In California, the crop using the most water is pasture, but pasture lands only generatea gross value of $93 million. Next is alfalfa, using around 4.1 million acre-feet (one acre-foot is the amount of water one acre large with a depth of one foot - 325,851 gallons -- glossary) and generating $570 million. Cotton uses 3.4 million acre-feet and only generates $824 million. These figures are out of a $480 billion dollar state economy. In comparison, grapes use only 1.6 million acre-feet of water and are worth $1.5 billion. These crops grown in a state with more rainfall would free up enough water for 70 million new Californians while shrinking the state economy by only one quarter of a percent.