Here in Southern California, they say that if you want to grow anything, the first thing you need to "plant" are irrigation pipes (or hoses). We've got the perfect temperature year-round to grow food, but we don't have the perfect amount of rainfall. And - despite the six straight days of near-constant rainfall we just had - this year is predicted to be a dry year for us.
Where the rainfall from those six days wasn't causing floods or mudslides, the majority of it was squandered. In our yard, we collected a tiny fraction of the rain in our 60 gallon rain barrel. Significantly larger rain barrels cost hundreds of dollars, like the 1300 gallon barrel a friend has, which ran her $1300. For us and for so many others, most of the rain that fell on our yard went down the drain. Our roof, our yard, and our driveway are all set up to direct the rain right into the sewers. So are most other yards around here. Once the water runs into the sewers, I believe it is channeled into the ocean.
But ever since that six day deluge, we've had precious little rain. I can't remember the last time it rained, and the weather forecast now predicts 10 days of sunshine. As a gardener, I'm getting frustrated. I've been watering the plants with my watering can, but nothing beats rainfall. The effect rain has on plants (compared to watering, and assuming the rain doesn't result in a flood) is simply magical. Drip irrigation is pretty good, but rainwater comes without any of the salts that are in irrigation water. (Drip irrigation using rainwater collected in a rain barrel would work well, I suppose. But that brings us back to the need for an expensive rain barrel.)
What I'm learning about water as a gardener has major implications for my entire region. Living soil can hold more water than dead soil. Last summer, one particular part of our garden with very poor soil could hardly grow a thing. Most everything I planted there died, and it was more than a problem of nitrogen, although that was likely a problem too. When plants didn't die, they grew very slowly. This is even true of plants with low nitrogen needs, like beets.
Watering this part of the yard was impossible. The water could hardly penetrate the soil, and instead it evaporated off the top. This meant that the plants got very little water, and it would require a ridiculous amount of water (losing a lot to evaporation) just to get the plants what they needed.
When the rainy season came this year, I was ready. I planted cover crops all over that part of the yard - a mix of rye grass and hairy vetch, with a fava bean planted every 8 inches. With the rain, the cover crops thrived. I am now in the process of killing them and leaving them on the soil as a mulch for when I plant my brassica plants there. We'll see if the brassica plants survive this time around. I noticed we've also got some volunteer lettuce and dill growing there. I plan to add worm castings and compost to the top few inches of the soil after I harvest my brassica plants, and then I want to grow corn, beans, and squash in that area this summer. And hopefully, by then, the soil will have some ability to hold water. Hopefully, when I water that area this summer, the water won't just evaporate off the soil's surface as it did last summer.
What all of this says to me is that we will be a lot better off if for having less water in advance than if we wait until it's too late. If the climate crisis is going to bring extremes like droughts and floods (not just here, but all over the world), then it's true that an ounce of preparation is better than a pound of cure. When there's plenty of water supplied by moderate rainfall (and no flooding), it's no big deal if your soil can't hold much water. So what if the water runs off or evaporates? It'll rain again soon. But once you've got extremes (droughts and floods), good soil that holds water is crucial. And at that point, it will be a lot more difficult and resource-intensive to improve your soil than if you had done it before when the weather was less extreme.
At the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, in December, the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Jacques Diouf, emphasized the need to promote what he called "climate smart" agriculture for food security and climate change adaptation. "By climate smart," he said, "we mean agriculture that sustainably increases productivity and resilience to environmental pressures, while at the same time reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or removes them from the atmosphere, because we cannot ignore the fact that agriculture is itself a large emitter of greenhouse gases."
This has got to be the best political news I've read in a long time. A little before 1:00 a.m. last night, by a vote of 94-44, the New York State Assembly passed the moratorium on hydraulic fracture drilling.
Well it may only be state legislature and the governor still need to sign but apparently this moratorium to protect our drinking water is a first. It's not top down and the Working Families Party humbly takes some of the credit for more than 52,000 New Yorkers signing the petition urging the Assembly to act.
Go ahead: get up from your chair. Do a little dance, pump your fist, or do whatever you do to celebrate a victory of grassroots action over corporate power.
I just received a letter form the WFP and I was doing just that.
Farmers in the Uluguru Mountains in Tanzania are fighting a losing battle against increasingly degraded land. Repeated plantings are quickly depleting the nutrients in the soil, leaving it nearly barren and vulnerable to erosion. Meanwhile, downstream, the water is dark with sediment, unfit for drinking and expensive to treat. "Downstream, people are complaining about the quality of water," says Lopa Dosteus, program manager for CARE International's Equitable Payment for Watershed Management (EPWM) program. "And upstream, the farmers are struggling to grow enough food while their soil washes away."
In this week's episode, Nourishing the Planet research intern, Elena Davert, introduces a counter-intuitive method of cleaning water. In 2004 Peter Njodzeka founded the Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC) with a rather simple goal. " I wanted to see the people in my area have clean water," he said. "And we kept expanding. That's how it started." Now, LWDGC, with support from Engineers without Borders (EWB) and Thirst Relief International, is teaching households how to use dirt and bacteria to clean their water, greatly improving the quality of drinking water and all but eliminating diseases caused by contaminated water.
Referred to as a "supermarket on a trunk," moringa is potentially one of the planet's most valuable plants. Serving not only as a reliable source of diverse foods, moringa also provides lamp oil, wood, paper, liquid fuel, skin treatments, and the means to help purify water. But despite its multiple uses, and well-earned nickname, the tree is relatively unknown to most people in the United States.
Referred to as a "supermarket on a trunk," moringa is potentially one of the planet's most valuable plants.
In 2004 Peter Njodzeka founded the Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC) with a rather simple goal. " I wanted to see the people in my area have clean water," he said. "And we kept expanding. That's how it started."
In this regular video series, we bring you images, interviews and more in-depth information about different agricultural innovations. Get to know the NtP team and the innovations we are highlighting regularly, and stay tuned for more NtP TV in the coming weeks!
In this week's episode, Nourishing the Planet research intern, Abby Massey, discusses some of the projects throughout sub-Saharan Africa that are working to give farmers access to clean water for irrigation, washing and drinking. Access to even a little bit of clean water can greatly reduce illness and improve crop yields. With the right resources these projects could bring clean water to even more farmers. Much like water itself-a little of the right kind of funding could go a long way.
In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, people are forced to travel long distances and spend hours at a time collecting the water needed for cooking and drinking from far away streams or wells. But the residents of Cabazane, South Africa have found a much less labor intensive alternative. They use gravity and let water come to them.
Built at an altitude of 1,600 meters, steel cables held by wood posts support the two layers of shade clothe nets used to catch tiny droplets of water from the passing mountain fog near Brooks Nek Pass. The drops of water create run-off that is caught in gutters built at the bottom of the nets. This water is then carried by tubes down the side of the mountain and to the village. With each square meter of netting providing up to five liters of water per day, Cabazane can collect hundreds of liters on a good day.
And, most importantly, coming from the clouds, the water is very clean-an especially valuable commodity in area previously suffering from water shortages. The nearest stream to the village is two kilometers away and contaminated by animal use. Residents who used the stream were often exposed to water-borne diseases. Once dams were used to collect water in the area, but extreme drought has even dried up this source.
Nandi Ntsiko, a resident of Cabazane, in the Alternet article, "having piped water was a pipe dream for us. We were forced to share drinking water with animals in this stream. The situation was dire."
Now the villagers not only have a steady supply of clean water, they have enough of it to store in newly constructed tanks. The netting also provides the additional benefit of being completely gravity-driven. No electricity is needed to power this innovation, making it affordable and environmentally friendly, and the technology is simple enough that maintenance is relatively easy.
Collecting water from fog is a technique that has been used for almost 30 years in some mountainous parts of Chile, and the project at Cabazane has been so successful that it's already been replicated in other dry areas of South Africa, including Venda and Limpopo.
As climate change worsens, and fresh water availability grows more erratic, the food security of small-scale farmers throughout Africa will increasingly depend on their water management abilities. Luckily, the tools for improving water management already exist. But, as a recent report from the Rockefeller Foundation notes, the key to getting these tools to the people who need them the most will be making sure that the funding, donor, and policy-making community understands what they are and why they need more support.
There are many examples of simple and inexpensive ways of improving water management for small-scale farmers and the report highlights a number of them. Increased investment in small holder irrigation, for example, creates greater diversity of water source options, such as small streams, shallow wells, boreholes, and rainwater storage, and gives farmers and small communities' autonomy over their water sources. Low technology irrigation methods are also cost-efficient, such as surface irrigation systems like furrows and small basins, pressurized systems such as sprinklers and drip, and water lifting technologies which can be driven by gravity, manual labor, and motorized pumps.
More than 30 years ago, Congress identified factory farms as water pollution sources to be regulated under the Clean Water Act's permit program.
But under a Bush administration regulation challenged by the environmental groups in this lawsuit, large facilities were able to escape government regulation by claiming, without government verification, that they do not discharge into waterways protected by the Clean Water Act.
Under the settlement reached May 26, the EPA will initiate a new national effort to track down factory farms operating without permits and determine if they must be regulated.
More here. What happens next will determine if the EPA actually is an agency that protects the environment or if, as The Onion suggests, it should just be renamed The Agency.
As a resident of Southern California, I am acutely aware of the water used in my garden. It's a scarce resource, and yet the ground is bone dry and my plants won't grow unless I water them frequently. That's why an Agroinnovations podcast on Clay Pot Irrigation caught my attention. The clay pots are called ollas ("OY-yas"). You bury your olla up to its neck in the soil, fill it with water, and cover it with a rock. The water then seeps through the olla into the soil, providing water to the plants. Over time, plants grow a thick web of roots around the olla so they can draw the water out on an as-needed basis. Thus, your plant gets all of the water it needs but you save water overall because you aren't spraying it on the soil surface where it can run off or evaporate. Brilliant!
Many companies are now buying up land in African countries such as Ethiopia to engage in large-scale agriculture, the bulk of whose output is then shipped out of these countries to the Middle East and Europe. The purchased land is often communal in nature, used for grazing or to help preserve the agricultural productivity of surrounding lands. But the local governments consider it to be unowned, and if it is still arable it can be sold off. Not surprisingly, this also impacts water availability to the local communities.
The issues are discussed in this article from the Guardian:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein ignited a firestorm among fellow California Democrats on Thursday as word spread of her proposal to divert Northern California water to Central Valley farmers.
Feinstein wants to attach the proposal as an amendment to a fast-tracked Senate jobs bill. She is pitching the plan as a jobs measure to address the economic calamity in the Central Valley. It would increase farm water allocations from 10 percent last year to 40 percent this year and next, an amount that farmers say is the bare minimum they need.
Why is she so eager to help farmers? The article goes on to say:
Feinstein has long supported California agriculture but began to weigh in on the side of farmers in the water wars after requests from Stewart Resnick, the well-connected owner of Paramount Farms, which grows citrus and nuts on 118,000 acres in Kern County.
In September, Resnick wrote Feinstein complaining that "sloppy science" by federal wildlife agencies was causing farm water shortages. A week later, Feinstein forwarded the letter to Obama administration officials, who authorized a review by the National Academy of Sciences.
"It seems to be a complete reversal of her position," Thompson said. "The entire Bay Area delegation had agreed we would do this National Academy of Sciences report to find out scientifically what should and shouldn't be done, and for her to turn that on its head and go out unilaterally with this proposal does not take into consideration the needs of all of California."
Resnick's business has given $29,000 to Feinstein's campaigns and $246,000 more to Democratic political committees during years when she sought re-election, according to a report by California Watch, an investigative journalism nonprofit organization, that was published in The Chronicle in December.
On Sept. 4, Resnick wrote to Feinstein, complaining that the latest federal plan to rescue the delta's endangered salmon and shad fisheries was "exacerbating the state's severe drought" because it cut back on water available to irrigate crops. "Sloppy science" by federal wildlife agencies had led to "regulatory-induced water shortages," he claimed.
"I really appreciate your involvement in this issue," he wrote to Feinstein.
One week later, Feinstein forwarded Resnick's letter to two U.S. Cabinet secretaries. In her own letter, she urged the administration to spend $750,000 for a sweeping re-examination of the science behind the entire delta environmental protection plan.
The Obama administration quickly agreed, authorizing another review of whether restrictions on pumping irrigation water were necessary to save the delta's fish. The results could delay or change the course of the protection effort.
To environmentalists concerned with protecting the delta, it was a dispiriting display of the political clout wielded by Resnick, who is among California's biggest growers and among its biggest political donors.
