Bye Bye Home Vegie Gardens, page-17

Where in the heck is the 0.42 kg of CO₂ per unit of production footprint of a home garden coming from. The study cites infrastructure, inputs and irrigation but you don't actually use up garden edging and paths, its still there when you harvest the crop. Then some people might buy compost and fertiliser but plenty don't and I would suggest that home gardeners would rely more on rainfall than irrigation, in any case exactly the same amount of water will be required to produce a given amount of produce whether its in a home garden, a paddock or a greenhouse. The amount of water wasted in each system could be up for debate but if its from your own rainwater tank or grey water who cares.

This study (and thats being very generous) should be put with that poor excuse for research that said it used some ridiculous amount of water to grow a kilo of beef. That research (and thats being very generous again) completely neglected to take into account that the rain is going to fall and the grass is going to grow whether the cattle are there or not. A little bull calf growing into a 600 or 700kg steer isn't going to use up a single molecule of water, he might eat and drink plenty but they will all progress through his system completely unharmed as part of the water cycle. And if he spends the last month or two of his life in a feedlot putting on 100kg then yes his inputs certainly have had more investment put in them than just grass would have had but the same logic applies, not a single water molecule was hurt during the process. Every one of them lived to do it all again.