Prince Charles has made an impassioned plea to Americans to cut down on beef to save the world’s water. "For every pound of beef produced in the industrial system, it takes two thousand gallons of water," he told the Future of Food conference at Georgetown University on Wednesday, the
Daily Telegraph reports.
"That is a lot of water and there is plenty of evidence that the Earth cannot keep up with the demand."
Charles, long known for his “tree-hugging” environmentalist beliefs, described water as a "magical substance we have taken for granted for so long.”
The heir to the British throne is on a three-day visit to America. He also met President Barack Obama, who had been left off the guest list for last week’s wedding of Charles’ son William to Kate Middleton, on Wednesday.
During his Georgetown speech, Charles also criticized the loss of agricultural land in the United States: “I am told one acre is lost to development every minute of every day, which means that, since 1982, an area the size of Indiana has been built over.
“Soil is being washed away 10 times faster than the Earth can replenish it," he said.
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