The CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook touts the benefits of a vegetarian diet. Such a diet will both reduce your carbon footprint and improve your general health and wellbeing. Here is the relevant link to the CSIRO website

http://www.csiro.au/resources/Energy-Saving-Handbook--ci_pageNo-4.html#5

The Home Energy Saving Handbook website points to the website of another CSIRO publication, The CSIRO Healthy Heart Program. Here is the relevant link

http://www.csiro.au/org/Healthy-Heart-Program.html

Beef farmers are understandably upset with the CSIRO. No one likes having their livelihoods threatened. Victorian state Liberal MP John Vogels, who represents a farming area, had this to say:

"CSIRO should be forced to apologise to Australian livestock and diary farmers for publishing a flawed climate change handbook urging people to eat less red meat and adopt vegetarian diets,"

"[Home Energy Saving Handbook is] thinly veiled propaganda advocating Australians change to a vegetarian lifestyle in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions".

"If the populace took this book seriously our beef, sheepmeat, pork, poultry and dairy industries would be at risk because the authors want everyone to move to vegetable diets to reduce personal carbon footprints,"

"The best contribution these books could make to stop climate change would be for every copy to be taken off the shelves, pulped and recycled as toilet paper,"

(Quoted in The Age, http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/hot-air-over-csiros-new-enviro-diet-20090925-g518.html)

But can an increasingly water-short state Like Victoria afford a beef industry?

The average Melburnian consumes 50-60 thousand litres of water annually. That's direct consumption through the taps.

However it takes 17,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef. (Chapagain and Hoekstra, WATER FOOTPRINT OF NATIONS, VOLUME 1, PAGE 41)

With every kilogram of beef an Australian consumes 17,000 litres of "virtual water".

Vegetable alternatives to beef, such as soybeans, require a mere 2-3 thousand litres. Substitute just 4 kg of vegetable products for beef per year and you save the equivalent of an average Melburnian's annual water consumption.

Beef is the most water hungry meat. Here are the water requirements per kg for other meats:

Pork: 6,000 litres

Mutton or lamb: 7,000

Chicken: 3,000

Something to think about?

Worth noting Australia's first meat exports came via the dairy industry.
Northern NSW cracker cows and cross breed bread to keep cows in milk went into American hamburgers.
So milk has to be taken into consideration too.
And in my view, as a near vegetarian, worth wondering why some are so against what others eat.
We will always eat meat, always be able to sell it, and that ensures we will one day find ways to re use water save it, recycle it.
I doubt however we will ever eat only vegetables.
I eat to continue weight loss and stay healthy but meat is a must for my good health.

*However it takes 17,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef*

Perhaps we had better clarify a few things here. Do not confuse
intensive, mainly grain eating beef production, as is practised
in Europe or the USA, with the largely pasture raised beef in
Australia.

Now what if there were no cows or sheep to eat that grass? The
result would be a huge fuel load, right across the countryside
and nearly every summer you'd land up with another megafire, only
much larger then anything we have seen before, as cows and sheep
munching pasture create wonderful firebreaks.

Turning useless grass into human food makes perfect sense. The
CSIRO cookbook tells us that eating lean meat in moderation is
very healthy.

*However it takes 17,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef*

So just were does this figure come from and how is it calculated.

I would suggest that 'lot feeding' beef consumes the most water and, having done the calculations, 400 days on grass, then 100 days in a lot feed, that equates to 8,500 liters, or 850 2 galon buckets of water per day, per head and, considering only 20% of this time is in lot feeding, one has to wonder.

Sorry, but hat just does not seem possible.

I think the best people to decide if we should produce beef are

The folk who eat it and the folk who grow it.

Rather than some government paid and appointed functionary in the CSIRO.

We have another thread running… “Useless Guinness Records”

Where someone thinks the GBR should be curtailed and restrained from recording silly records.

This is the same debate, except we are talking “beef eating” versus “record reporting”.

The real, underlying debate is

Should people who are responsible for electing government be told, by the offices of government and their paid experts, what to do and what to eat

Or

Should the people, who elect government and fund the taxes from which experts are paid, be “respected” and allowed to make up their own choices and decisions.

For me it is a slam-dunk –

The consumer (aka the great unwashed), actually know their own circumstances best and will ultimately, make better personal choices, than the choices which remote third-party bureaucratic “experts” would seek to impose upon them.

and the cost curves of Supply and Demand can determine the amount of beef which is ultimately eaten

It really is a pity to see a once great organisation like the CSIRO become nothing than a poor excuse of another government spin office.

I have my doubts that the UN was ever much use, except as a place to park useless ex pollies, but the CSIRO was once really useful, & filled an important roll. Now it's about as useful as tits on a bull, as the saying goes.

Not only would it make a lot of sense to stop wasting our money, paying into the UN, [before Rudd gets his job there], but sadly it's time to close the CSIRO, & send the dead heads who now fill it's halls, off to do something useful.

Perhaps they could hand clear the rubber vine, from some northern national parks, for a start. Can't think of much else they could handle, at the moment.

Can Victoria afford a Beef Industry?

According to various websites
the answer seems to be:

Of course it can, and it should.

One website stated:

"As with any industry, producers require improvements
in productivity to maintain profits and international
competitiveness. Productivity gains can be made via
the use of new technology and better farm management
practices which would increase output or reduce inputs,
or both."

Another website pointed out that:

"There have been growths in organised Land Management
Groups in recent years that address the sustainability
of agricultural land by examining issues such as -
land degradation, water supply, salinity, soil fertility,
and feral animal control on a local basis."

Land Managmeent Groups such as "Landcare," encourage
things like having 1) A farm plan. 2) Training activities.
3) Wide range farming. 4) Adoption of larger proportion
of best farming practices. 5) Providing farmers with
information for each of their problems.

Some of the problems that were listed included
things like:

1) The need for effective management of woody vegetation
to prevent loss of biodiversity and dryland salinity.
2) Effective utilisation of effluent and manure.
3) Protection of land from degradation.
4) Protection of ground water resources.
5) Protection of surface water resources.
6) Land degradation from soil and water erosion due to
overgrazing and clearing of native vegetation.
7) Weed and pest control.

The key to keeping the Beef Industry functioning seems
to be (according to the experts), the use of new technology
and learning better farm management practices.

However, looking at things from a more simplistic
perspective - why not maintain the beef industry in the
North and the West of Australia where the big ranches
are. And, in the South and the East - where the grass
is greener (and the cows appear happier) stick to the
dairy industry. With modern day refrigeration and transport
do we really need to produce beef throughout all areas of
the country?

Quick question for the CSIRO. How much water falls on Victoria and what happens to it. I read its 70% agriculture, 20% industry and 10% Joe Public? However most of OUR rainfall that falls to earth evaporates or runs off but we never hear any detail about this?
CSIRO, farmers pay your wages. Do you want your handsome pay packets and superannuation far and above what any farmer can ever get? If you do want your pensions let the farmers earn them for you, however if its all wrong well we have to start deleting Public Service pensions, OK?

Has anyone recently been in Victoria? From Albury to Melbourne its wall to wall green grass, beautiful green grass covered with sheep and cattle. That green grass came from the atmosphere as the plants removed carbon dioxide from it, and sunshine stimulated photosynthesis. It came about because it has rained in Victoria. All of that grass is getting turned into either beef or mutton, the grain crops will make grain, and the wonderful cycle of birth, death, decay and rebirth that is agriculture is continuing. The green extends through the Riverina about as far as Goulburn, and all of it will be making beef.

It is totally stupid to equate a kilo of beef to a quantity of water. This is the sort of stinkin thinking that emanates from the Greens, who are really Browns, and want to see deserts depopulated and desolate.

One inch of rain on an acre equates to a measureable amount of water. About 95,000 kilo’s of water.

It’s always going to rain sometimes. The challenge we have is to make maximum use of the rain we get, and that is what the CSIRO should be doing. Making us aware of how we can get maximum value out of every drop of water

Vegetarian societies and animal rights groups like PETA came out in force after the Sam Neil Eat Meat ads arguing the same but in reverse.

I wouldn't make too much of it - the CSIRO also bought out a diet book that championed lean meat, vegies, fruits and nuts at the expense of carbohydrates with the expected backlash from cereal companies and nutritioninal 'experts'.

There is always someone pushing their own barrow for ideological or financial reasons. Ultimately we all make our own choices. As Yabby said much of the beef here is grass fed although often finished off for 2-3 months on grains prior to dispatch. Luckily in Australia we have access to purely grass fed meat.

Lets not be sheepish, no bones about it, on meaty issues like this, everyone has their own beef, once you flesh it out in HINDsight, get off your rump and realise the various interest of STEAKholders, there is no need to become sirloin about it. And I am not ribbing.

It’s always going to rain sometimes. The challenge we have is to make maximum use of the rain we get, and that is what the CSIRO should be doing. Making us aware of how we can get maximum value out of every drop of water

Very good point Peter.

Of the 95,000 kilos of water that falls, some is colleted in tanks, some in dams , some to soakage, but the majority is simply washed out to sea, often taking valuable top soils and not so pleaseant toxins with it.

Harvest the 90% or so that is lost, and we are well on the way to solving many problems, even population expansion.

We already collect the water in urban areas, through the use of 'storm water' drains. Why not simply re-direct it into our dams, creeks and rivers. Who knows, we may even save the Darling river.

It's a pitty we can spend so much time and money trying to establish whether life on mars is an option, yet, we can't fix a simple problem,(in relative terms) like water harvesting or, curing cancer.

I think it's time the 'tax payer' is given more input into where our 'tax dollars' are spent and the likes of the 'tax payer funded' CSIRO direct their efforts into 'solving existing problems' as oppossed to 're-inventing the wheel'.

Victoria and Australia can well afford a Beef Industry not withstanding the 17000 litres needed to produce the kilo of beef.

We have seen Melbourne Water "thieving" water from the farmers and parched environment North of the Great Divide and from the Murray River for a few pieces of silver.

They are guaranteeing Melbourne's future while denying the same for bush people north of the Great Divide .

That is bad enough, but the water ,which could go down the productive mouths of dairy and beef cows or emus for that matter ,is going to expand the resource greedy and environmentally rapacious population of people whose damage per head, far outweighs any environmental damage a cow, sheep or steer or a few emus or kangaroos will do .

It is sheer stupidity to increase the population of unsustainable ,uncontrollable People in Victoria with the damage they do, compared to the very minor damage a well managed herd of cows will do managed sustainably, with stocking rates set to increase the biodiversity of the surrounding countr