Firstly, the water requirements for cattle and their feed outstrips almonds, though they can live outside of places like California. Secondly it's why oat milk is such a beneficial invention, as oats are a big crop in a lot of places like rainy Ireland. Our local porridge company has branched into oat milk, so now it's supporting local business too. How local and seasonal a product is can make a big difference too.

@@AshArAis I'm not playing tit-vs-tat. Water requirement estimates for dairy vary widely. A university extension says 4.5 gallons of water for every gallon of milk. At the top of my search results, a vegan (it's not explicitly stated, but obvious through naked advocacy) website promoted by an almond farmer says it takes 55 gallons of water to make a single 8-ounce serving of cow's milk. Which would be 880 gallons of water per milk gallon. The university extension cites sources for their raw numbers and presents their calculations. They do not appear to be taking into account feed, just drinking water and water for farm operations (cleaning, equipment cooling, etc). The vegan site provides a lot of pretty infographics and the only sources they cite are the ones providing the numbers they are trying to debunk. The numbers of water use per almond are known from actual water use numbers by growers (carefully tracked here in California) and almond yield numbers (also carefully tracked). I'm only reviewing these two examples for cow's milk, but here's the university one: www.canr.msu.edu/news/water_use_on_dairy_farms#:~:text=Based%20on%20the%20Ohio%20study,produce%20one%20gallon%20of%20milk. By the way, since they don't do the conversion and quote dairy output in lbs/cow/day, a US gallon of cow's milk is 8.6 lbs. I'm not sure what happens to a dairy cow end of life, I've only known beef producers. Do they end up as meat and leather and bone meal/gelatin? How do you attribute water use for those products? For feed production water, do you count only irrigation water or is an estimation of rainwater added in? I answered two of my own questions above. They get slaughtered for their meat which is ground into hamburger as they are too tough for whole cuts. Those that die before slaughtering (old age/disease) are sent to rendering plants as burial is not usually a legal option. According to farmers, the ones given pasture are longer-lived than those factory farmed. Concrete is not good for the joints in particular. And lameness puts the cow in the "potential BSE" category and sends them immediately to a rendering plant. And hoo boy! Are the vegans ever full of lies on this particular one. They dominate the search results and, as usual, cite no sources, presenting only horror stories meant to play on emotions.