Eat Less Water

by Florencia Ramirez

Overview

Experts predict two-thirds of people living on this planet in 2030 will experience water scarcity, a situation expected to result in the deaths of millions and an unprecedented rise in military conflicts. Can we as individuals hope to have any effect on the global scale of water misuse?

Yes, we can make a significant difference—with our food choices—learned author and activist Florencia Ramirez as she traveled across the nation to interview farmers and food producers. Tracing Ramirez’s tour of American water sustainable farms—from rice paddies in Cajun Louisiana to a Hawaiian coffee farm to a Boston chocolate factory and beyond—Eat Less Water tells the story of water served on our plates: an eye-opening account of the under-appreciated environmental threat of water scarcity, a useful cookbook with water-sustainable recipes accompanying each chapter, and a fascinating personal narrative that will teach the reader how they, too, can eat less water.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597090391
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	11/01/2017
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Florencia Ramirez is a trained researcher at the University of Chicago's School of Public Policy. She won the sixth Gift of Freedom Creative Nonfiction Award from the A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO). Her articles appear in Edible Communities Magazine, the San Jose Mercury News, among others, and her popular blog. She lives in Oxnard, California, an agricultural town on the Pacific coast that smells of celery, strawberries and fertilizers with her husband and three young children. www.florenciaramirez.com

Read an Excerpt

Prologue: Drop of Water

Drops of water saved my father’s life.

In the sweltering days following my father’s birth, he just lay there. He did not cry. He refused milk.

On the fourth day, my grandmother sent his eldest sister to borrow a small table from the neighbor’s chicken coop. They would need something to put my father’s tiny body on, for the family viewing. My grandmother knew the signs of a dying baby. She’d given birth to eleven children. Only seven survived.

My father’s sister came back with the table, but she refused to give up on her newborn brother. There had to be a doctor who would examine a baby for free. She ran through the heat of the Mexican summer to the town center and began knocking on doors.

Someone knew a doctor, but he was busy with other patients. When he listened to her, this little girl desperate about her baby brother, the physician agreed to make a house call the next day.

That night, a strong wind blew through the open window of the bedroom where my father lay. The gust startled my grandfather awake. He threw himself over my father’s listless body to shield him against what my grandfather always described as an otherworldly chill. A cold hand pressed down on his back. He believed it was the hand of La Muerte, Death.

The cold wind retreated as suddenly as it arrived. My father was still alive, just barely.

The doctor arrived the next morning. After a quick examination, he knew what was wrong. He prescribed gotitas de agua. Drops of water on the baby’s lips.

Within days, my father’s condition slowly improved. He suffered from dehydration. His sister, my tia Antonia, returned the table to the neighbors, back to the chicken coop where it belonged.

When I told this story to my friends at school, I always made sure to emphasize the part about Death paying a visit only to leave empty-handed.

“Did you know one drop of water holds all the fresh water in the world?” a retired park ranger asked me at my booth during an Earth Day event.

“How so?”

“If we poured all the water on our planet, both salt water and fresh water, in a gallon bucket, the proportion of water available to shower, water our lawns, drink, and grow food is one single drop.”

We live on a water planet. The Earth is two-thirds water, and 97.5 percent of that is salt water. Of the 2.5 percent fresh water, 69.5 percent of that is frozen.

Another 30.1 percent hides in deep aquifers. The remaining 0.4 percent—a drop in a bucket—sustains all the life on this planet.

Now when I tell my father’s story to my own children, I emphasize the power of a single drop of water.

Interviews

Rootstock interview

Editorial Reviews

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/wbw/jan_19.htm#Fiction

Interviewed on KCRW

"Exceptional, unique, impressively informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, Eat Less Water is an extraordinary and life-changing read that is very highly recommended, especially for community and academic library Contemporary Environmental Issues collections, as well as the personal reading lists of anyone concerned with the conservation of water in a changing global climate.—Julie Summers, Midwest Book Review

“Eat Less Water is as clever as its title. It’s a thoughtful book complete with recipes that are as good for your taste buds as they are for the planet. Read it and learn. Read it and eat. Read it as a reminder that our world’s most precious resource is in jeopardy—and yet we can do something about it. Read it to find out how.”—Thomas M. Kostigen, New York Times bestselling author of The Green Book

“Eat Less Water is an informative, loving tribute to the source from which all life springs. Through explorations of foods ranging from pasta to wine, Florencia Ramirez reveals how cultivation and consumption impact global water usage, sharing insights on how we, the eaters, can support a less-resource intensive practices in food and agriculture that is not only sustainable but delicious.”—Simran Sethi, author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love

"A fascinating cornucopia of methods to reduce water use through organic propagation and preparation.

In exploring efforts toward reducing global consumption of the Earth’s most precious commodity, writer, blogger, and public policy researcher Ramirez has developed a bountiful, delectable road map of farming innovation and conservationist food preparation. The Earth is two-thirds water, mostly saline, and by 2030, it’s estimated that half the world will experience freshwater scarcity. Preservation is a key conservation concern, writes the author, who regularly attends Earth Day events and promotes water-saving items like shower timers. After focusing on water-waste prevention in bathrooms, Ramirez, recognizing that “seven out of every ten gallons of water is used for food production,” redirected her efforts to the kitchen, where much more could be saved. In a text bolstered by documentation and suffused with a true creative passion for resource preservation, the author presents a series of chapters on the interaction and integration of water with a variety of foods, liquids, production processes, and “on-the-edge farming.” Ramirez fully immerses herself in her subject with eye-opening field trips to resourceful water-sustainable croplands across America. Among them, a California dry biodynamic wheat farm thriving through the advent of cover cropping, a trailblazing rice farm, an aquaponic ranch in the Texas Plain, a “green” egg farming operation, and a Hawaiian organic shade-grown coffee plantation. Concerned conservationists, environmental and agricultural activists, and everyday farmers and consumers alike will be enticed by Ramirez’s passionately delivered and convincing combination of charming narrative, strategic resource preservation techniques, and pages of recipes ideas from crustless cheesecake to spinach quiche and chicken tortilla soup. “Be part of a change that will make a difference in creeks, rivers, groundwater, and oceans across the planet,” she encourages. “Start tonight at your kitchen table.”

Impeccable writing and practical, relevant, planet-friendly alternatives to reducing water consumption in cooking and agricultural production." —Starred Kirkus Review

From the Publisher

★ 2019-01-30

A fascinating cornucopia of methods to reduce water use through organic propagation and preparation.

In exploring efforts toward reducing global consumption of the Earth's most precious commodity, writer, blogger, and public policy researcher Ramirez has developed a bountiful, delectable road map of farming innovation and conservationist food preparation. The Earth is two-thirds water, mostly saline, and by 2030, it's estimated that half the world will experience freshwater scarcity. Preservation is a key conservation concern, writes the author, who regularly attends Earth Day events and promotes water-saving items like shower timers. After focusing on water-waste prevention in bathrooms, Ramirez, recognizing that "seven out of every ten gallons of water is used for food production," redirected her efforts to the kitchen, where much more could be saved. In a text bolstered by documentation and suffused with a true creative passion for resource preservation, the author presents a series of chapters on the interaction and integration of water with a variety of foods, liquids, production processes, and "on-the-edge farming." Ramirez fully immerses herself in her subject with eye-opening field trips to resourceful water-sustainable croplands across America. Among them, a California dry biodynamic wheat farm thriving through the advent of cover cropping, a trailblazing rice farm, an aquaponic ranch in the Texas Plain, a "green" egg farming operation, and a Hawaiian organic shade-grown coffee plantation. Concerned conservationists, environmental and agricultural activists, and everyday farmers and consumers alike will be enticed by Ramirez's passionately delivered and convincing combination of charming narrative, strategic resource preservation techniques, and pages of recipes ideas from crustless cheesecake to spinach quiche and chicken tortilla soup. "Be part of a change that will make a difference in creeks, rivers, groundwater, and oceans across the planet," she encourages. "Start tonight at your kitchen table."

Impeccable writing and practical, relevant, planet-friendly alternatives to reducing water consumption in cooking and agricultural production.

Kirkus Reviews