Beef - virtual water

Beef is the name of meat from domestic cattle. It is possible to calculate the virtual water used in the production of beef by examining the virtual water consumed by a cow during it's lifetime. On average it takes 3 years before a cow is slaughtered, thought sometimes less and will produce 200kg of beef. 

During these 3 years we would expect the cow to drink approximately 24,000 litres of water, consume food including grains, e.g. wheat and oats, and roughage, e.g. grass and hay, requiring 3,060,000 litres of water and 7,000 litres in the slaughtering process. That's a total of 3,091,000 litres in total.

On average it requires 15,400 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef.