Livestock and meat production have some of the largest water footprints of the agricultural industry, taking nearly 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef and 576 gallons for pork. About 108 gallons of water are needed to harvest one pound of corn. Livestock production is also one of the most resource-intensive agricultural outputs. This is largely due to their large feed conversion ratio. Livestock's large water consumption may also be attributed to the amount of time needed to raise an animal to slaughter. Again, in an invalid contrast to corn, which grows to maturity in about 100 days, about 995 days are needed to grow cattle. The global "food animal" population is just over 20 billion creatures; with 7+ billion humans, this equates to about 2.85 animals per human.
