If we looked at Earth from outer space, it would appear that our blue-and-green planet has abundant water. But of all that blue, less than 3% is freshwater, and less than 1% of that is available for use. More than a billion people lack access to water, and 2.7 billion experience water scarcity for at least one month out of the year.

And before anyone comments otherwise, it takes a lot of blue water too

Even an industry funded study found beef used 2000 L/kg of blue water compared to it noting that corn crops only use 3–280 L/kg of blue water and soy at around 36–616 L/kg. That’s likely best case numbers for beef due to the conflict of interests

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X18305675

And it uses that water in water scarce areas

Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs