When we lived in a truck, we'd be lucky to go through 25 litres of water a day. That was for washing dishes, cooking, and washing us. When you don't have a means to store water, and it doesn't come out of the tap, you figure out ways to conserve it. Water becomes precious.

We've enjoyed water here in Victoria for the last few years, not worrying about our use so much because we've gone through a time of plenty. Yet with the threat of drought looming, I am starting to be a little more pro-active about the water I use. I do this every year as we approach summer - I know that our water bill goes through the roof unless we're cautious.

When Victoria suffered an eight year drought, known as the Millenium drought, we suffered the worst recorded conditions since European settlement. From 1996 through to 2010, water was a rarity. It never seemed to rain. I recall going to England and seeing these beautiful, plump, bloated raindrops falling on the windscreen and squealing like a little kid, much to prospective hubby's amusement. 2006 I missed - the driest on record - I was enjoying England's wet. By 2009, I was back, and everything was parched and scorched. Yet by 2010, La Nina ended the drought with floods - as Dorothy Mac said, we were indeed a land of 'droughts and flooding rains', beauty and horror and not much in between.

The drought led to the building of 6 seawater desalination plants and changes in water to the Murray Darling Basin, effects of which are still lamented today. Water restrictions limited people to 155 litres per household, per day. People installed grey water systems to water the lawns and put signs on fences that said so, lest they be reported to the authorities. No one washed their cars or driveways and everyone let their vegetable patches die - you could only water two days a week so if there was a hot day, they'd just die unless you were bucketing water from the shower.

Yet when we moved onto our 5 acres, we were at the end of that, and I was determined to have a vegetable garden to provide for us and give us some freedom from the big supermarkets and the other forces that dictated our lives. I remember crouching down with the hose watering the garden so the neighbours wouldn't see me. Was I failing my civic duty? Was I irresponsible and irreverant, wasting these valuable drops of water?

I was determined that I was right - that there was FAR more water wasted on products and services than would be wasted on my vegetables. Research found that for every dollar spent at the supermarket, you could count on 28 litres of water being embedded in these products. Production, agriculture, packaging, transport - they were using far more water than I was using to grown my own organic vegetables. Agricultural is response for about 80 percent of all water used.

Whilst researching this, I found:

• The global average water footprint of 1243 cubic metres per capita per year, Australia's is higher at 1393 cubic metres.
• UNESCO has predicted that water shortages will become a major problem by 2020 and that the available water per person will drop by a third over the next two decades. In the future, water will be a critical factor in determining how much food can be grown
• the world produces twice as much food as it did in the 1960s, but needs three times as much water .
• BY far most of Australia's water usage is from agriculture.. 80 percent!

The following stats are based on global averages. I got rid of the meat from the list as the list was getting long - and that's a whole other story. If you're vegetarian, it'll take about 1500 litres per day, compared to 4000 for meat.

1kg apples – 700 litres
1 glass beer (250ml) – 75 litres
1kg cheese – 5000 litres
1kg coconut – 2500 litres
1kg coffee – 21,000 litres
1kg cotton – 11,000 litres
1kg eggs – 3300 litres
1kg leather – 16,600 litres
1kg maize – 900 litres
1kg millet – 5000 litres
1 litre milk – 1000 litres
1kg oranges – 500 litres
1 sheet paper – 10 litres
1kg rice – 3400 litres
1kg sorghum – 2800 litres
1kg soybeans – 1800 litres
1kg sugar – 1500 litres
1kg tea – 9200 litres
1kg wheat – 1300 litres
1 glass wine (125ml) – 120 litres

Eeek! 120 litres for wine!!! We're getting new chickens after the last were eaten by a fox. J. is an Englishman, and would never, ever, ever give up his tea. But I think I can talk him into making more of his homebrew for the summer. Soybeans, wheat, rice, milk we don't eat much of, and virtually no sugar. I'm a bit mortified about the wine, but do try to buy Australian wines, reducing air miles. The point is we're never going to give up all of this stuff but we can be a little more conscious about our consumer habits. J. quipped that probably the best way to save water is to dehydrate it, because all you need to do is add water, but he's a facetious twat sometimes.

We do need to consider how much water we use and the ways we can put less demand on the agricultural sector, thus preventing the drying up of inland farming areas like the Murray Darling and the other consequences of intensive farming. I know that we'll be forced to adopt water restrictions again if this drought does arrive - the question is, will we be ready for it, and be able to sustain our vegetable growing and the ability to provide for our table from our acreage?

That post, my friends, is for my coming posts about how I'm making my garden even more water wise this summer.

What is your water footprint?

Have you lived through drought?

What novel ways have you encountered to limit your water use, and thus impact on the earth?

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