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Title: Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? by Sandra Postel ISBN: 0-393-31937-7 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This book should be required reading for everyone
Comment: The expansion of irrigation world wide has made a major contribution to increased food production, but for many years the World Watch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute have called attention to the danger of falling water tables and rivers that no longer reach the sea. Although China increased grain production from 90m tons in 1950 to 392 million tons in 1998, this was achieved at the price of rapidly falling water tables with the result that consumption exceeded production in four of the last five years; very soon China will be importing 30 - 50 million tons of grain annually, putting pressure on world grain prices. As wheat requires 1000 tons of water to produce one ton of wheat, the key challenges are: "how can we meet growing human needs for irrigation water without destroying the health of rivers, lakes and other aquatic systems? How can we grow enough food in a sustainable manner?" History tells us that most irrigation-based civilizations fail. The question we must address is "Will our civilization be different?"
Settled agriculture started 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia but around 4,000 BC enterprising Sumerian farmers in the Fertile Crescent - present day Iraq - diverted water from the Euphrates to prevent crops withering before harvest. Irrigation allowed farmers to grow an extra crop and produce surpluses leading to an expanding population and a flourishing civilization but also bringing soil degradation from salt left by evaporation. By the 16th century the Fertile Crescent, was little more than a salty wasteland. 20% of the irrigated land today suffers from salt build up; land lost offsets increased productivity from expanding irrigation. The solution is to use just the amount of water required during the growing season and just enough to leach away salts in the root zone and then to reuse drainage water for crops with a higher salt tolerance such as cotton or tomatoes for canning or paste.
The rise and fall of civilizations closely follows the success and ultimate failure of irrigation. In 1800, global irrigated area was about the size of Austria, while today it is 30 times larger, provides 40% of our food, and is the foundation for feeding 70 million new mouths each year. However, our present day base for food production is highly vulnerable as groundwater is over-pumped and salinization spreads. Increasing land productivity is our main hope at a time when water scarcity and water misuse are the biggest threats to global food production. Food prices are at historically low levels making it difficult to justify new investments in irrigation systems. Many important food-producing regions are sustained by the hydrological equivalent of deficit financing. While water shortages are the main problem, they are compounded by global warming bringing a changing climate, shifting rainfall patterns, and more frequent hurricanes and monsoons. In addition low-lying agricultural land is lost as sea levels rise from thermal expansion of the oceans and melting glaciers and ice caps. Increasing land productivity means extending irrigation to the smallest and poorest farmers, particularly in South Asia and sub-Sahara Africa.
Irrigation will provide the bulk of the additional food needed in the decades ahead, but there is a shift of water away from agriculture to satisfy rapidly growing urban and industrial demands. We have to grow more food with less water; more crop per drop is the agricultural frontier of the 21st century. "There is no obvious, off-the-shelf package available to raise water productivity. This new challenge will require a more diverse and creative mix of strategies that together make agriculture more information-intensive and less resource intensive. - in most cases, by substituting technology and better management for water. But the technologies and strategies described in this chapter inspire hope that we can achieve the doubling of water productivity needed to satisfy the food, water, and environmental needs of the next several decades - if we choose."
Adoption of drip and other microirrigation techniques cut water use and increase crop yields but only 1% of the world's irrigated area uses these methods. If combined with other methods productivity can be greatly improved. "Wuertz pioneered a farming system that combines drip irrigation with minimum tillage of the soil. He buried drip tubing 8-10 inches deep in every crop row, and then practiced multiple cropping of vegetables and field crops (including cotton) along with minimum tillage, leaving the drip irrigation system in place. Studies of Wuertz's low-till drip methods by the University of Arizona showed that the system was able to cut water and energy use by about half and field labor by nearly 60% while increasing lint yield from cotton crops by 13%."
Improved management practices can help farmers reduce water demands while maintaining or increasing crop yields. Weather monitoring and satellite technologies help farmers know when crops need irrigation; pricing water more effectively provides an incentive to farmers to use water more efficiently; improving the ability of crops themselves to use water more efficiently; improving the harvest index to get more edible crop from the same amount of water; breeding or bioengineering plants that photosynthesize in a more water-efficient manner; reuse of municipal waste water for irrigation - these are all part of the solution. Much of the world's grain goes to feed livestock but pork requires twice as much grain per kilo as chicken or farmed fish. Many farmers who are too poor to tap the water a short distance below the surface, a flaw which needs to be remedied by providing them access to affordable irrigation.
Globally the grain harvest is enough but 15% of the world's population cannot afford grain even at today's historically low prices. Very soon food prices will rise, the housewife will complain at the supermarket, and we will see people starving in poor countries. Then people will ask "What went wrong?" The answers are to be found in this book that should be required reading for everyone.
Rating: 5
Summary: More crop per drop - fewer drops for all
Comment: Sandra Postel goes well beyond a simple answer to the question posed by her subtitle 'Can the Irrigation Miracle last?' This book is an important resource for anybody trying to understand why water scarcity is such a major and escalating problem at the dawn of this century. Rather than adding to the generalist debate of the economists on water as a commodity or the projection into future problems presented by policy analysts and environmentalists, Postel analyzes particular examples in the past to explain the present and to make recommendations for the future.
Postel opens by reviewing major early societies in history, from Mesopotamia to Babylon, Egypt to ancient China, showing how they developed into major civilizations and why they fell. Yes, fell. Almost all great irrigation-based civilizations (Egypt being a rare exception) collapsed as a result of reallocation and overuse of water resources resulting in salinization, silting, soil degradation, etc.
Have we learned any lessons form the past? Postel argues that it does not seem so. She gives a factual account of a wide range of irrigation systems of the modern era, comparing methodologies and results to those in the past. The development of huge irrigation areas in India (Punjab), China and the US have either already demonstrated a repeat of the old mistakes or will do so in the near future. The groundwater tables are overused without being replenished and aquifers are tapped that have little chance to recover even in the long term. She describes two kinds of water wars: farms versus cities and nature and irrigation versus water scarcity. Water is reallocated and shifted from one use to another, but in some way, we are all living downstream from somebody else. Robbing Peter to pay Paul has its limits: the earth's fresh water resources are finite.
Against the backdrop of increasing water scarcity around the globe, Postel sees as humanity's main challenge the growing of enough food for our future population in a sustainable manner. She describes the pitfalls and the short-term fixes that will result in even greater problems in the future. At the same time, given the substantial increase in crop yield thanks to irrigation, she is realistic in her assessment that agriculture will not be able to do without it. As a result, the objective will have to be to reduce the amount of water we use for agriculture while at the same time producing more crop per drop of water.
Postel has traveled the world to review water systems, big and small, wasteful and efficient. Water needs saving in all areas of use, industrial, private and in agriculture. As agriculture uses by far the most of the global water resources, savings here will have major impacts down the line. She demonstrates on the basis of examples and statistics what is possible and how irrigation in agriculture can become highly effective and water conserving and restraint. She touches on the need to develop 'water-thrifty' plants, but, unfortunately, does not examine the traditional African crop varieties that are known to be drought tolerant and pest resistant. Postel appears to underestimate the importance of crop biodiversity; focusing on 'major' crops like wheat, maize and rice. Traditional farming systems developed in the earth's drylands could teach modern agriculture some important lessons.
Her main conclusion is that water management systems, whether public or private are most successful when they involve the local users and are based on a fair sharing of water resources at the community levels. Water markets and water trading provide options for the future as long as there is a fair and equitable basis for water access and use.
'Pillar of Sand' is clearly presented and easy to read. It will remain an important book in the intensifying debates around water use and mis-use, the increasing tension around demands between agriculture and other uses, and the privatization of water resource systems and the right of human beings to have the essential water they need to live.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great look at water and agriculture
Comment: and shows our vulnerability as we are trying to feed more and more people with less and less available water. I found it a very educational book.
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Title: Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity (The Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series) by Sandra Postel, Linda Starke ISBN: 0393317447 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters by Robert Jerome Glennon, Island Press ISBN: 1559632232 Publisher: Island Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource by Marq de Villiers ISBN: 0618127445 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 12 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The World's Water 2002 - 2003: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources by Peter Gleick, William C. G. Burns, Elizabeth L. Chalecki ISBN: 1559639490 Publisher: Island Press Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly and the Politics of Thirst by Diane Raines Ward ISBN: 1573222291 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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