There’s an interesting article about soil problems around the world in the online National Geographic. (Soil problems! Water crisis! Fuel shortages! I swear, I will find some good news to report on this month.)

The author visited the Wisconsin Farm Technology Days (lucky stiff, I had to miss it this year) and used that as the jumping off point for talking about soil issues. This being National Geographic, there was a lot more about China and Burkina Faso than about Wisconsin – but some of the lessons he picked up apply here as well.

The most interesting part of the article for me is the way that local farmers, using their own expertise and knowledge of the conditions on their own plot of land, have vastly outperformed government mandates for soil conservation. (In fact, in China, the government actually told farmers to take measures that ended up destroying soil and increasing erosion greatly in an attempt to boost yield – talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!)  Among many stories told in the National Geographic piece:

One farmer in the Sahel, the semi-arid zone south of the Sahara in Africa, rebuilt his compacted, overworked land bit by bit. He started with “cordons pierreux”, a clever and simple technique well-suited to the low-infrastructure African farming environment. To build a cordons pierreux , a farmer builds a line of rocks across the path of rainfall runoff. The rocks hold the water back and let it percolate into the Sahel’s damaged soil. Suspended silt in the rainfall settles back onto the soil rather than running off, and over time seeds that are caught by the rock line turn it into a line of plants, which then serve as a permanent water retention system.

The farmer, Yacouba Sawadogo, then used the downtime of the dry season to use a traditional technique for land reclamation. He hacked thousands of holes in the land with his hoe, about one feet deep, and filled them with manure. The manure attracted insects, which dug through the surrounding soil and greatly increased the aeration and looseness of the earth. He then planted trees in the holes, and planted millet in the spaces between the trees, converting what had been an arid wasteland into a productive forest/farm combination. The technique spread, and soon many people in his region were reclaiming their land as well. Unfortunately for Sawadogo, it worked so well that the local government ended up claiming the forest and redistributing it among local farmers – leaving him with one tiny parcel of the wealth he had created.

That points to the importance of government in the process – for good and for ill. A civil government that respects the knowledge and skill of the local farmers can be a force for good, providing the stability that farmers need in order to make it worth their while to practice good land management. A government that sends down irrational mandates or, worse yet, punishes labor by appropriation, makes it foolish for farmers to do anything but maximize their immediate profit. Yacouba Sawadogo is unlikely to create any more forests.

There is no solution to the water problem. Instead, there is a set of solutions and approaches that, taken together, will improve humanity’s ability to manage this most precious of commodities. Anyone who reads about the water problem quickly realizes that many of the people pushing the “crisis” are also pushing an agenda. Socialists think the water crisis means that the government needs to nationalize the water table. Capitalists think that everything should be privatized. Even farmers have an agenda, and it probably involves making sure that agriculture is #1 on the priority list for water.

There will undoubtedly be some structural changes in the way that water is managed – and whether that means privatizing decrepit and mismanaged public systems or creating markets to set rational prices for water or investing the billions it will take to put public water systems on a sound footing is more a question of local conditions than it is of the ideological merits of various forms of management. The truth is that, as with our energy problem, we’re going to need to try a lot of different approaches and ideas.

Fortunately, people are already applying their ingenuity to the water situation, both on the local level and on a global scale. Some municipalities are shipping in fresh water from nearby ports that have a surplus. Activists are raising public awareness of the water problem with traveling exhibits encouraging conservation and more responsible use of water. Wild-eyed geniuses are developing technologies to literally pull pure clean water out of the air – or just collecting the incredible bounty that often falls on developed land and then runs straight into the sea. Other organizations take a larger scale approach, urging the adoption of better irrigation techniques and conservation in the developing world. (where much irrigation water is wasted because the water infrastructure is so primitive)

From an agricultural point of view, there are two key points to keep in mind. One is that water for irrigation, over the long run, must come from sustainable sources. We cannot indefinitely “mine” the aquifers, nor will urban populations accept the diversion of drinking water into the fields past a certain point. Water for agriculture is an incredibly important priority, but it is not the only priority. The second point is that solving the water problem is going to require changes both on the large scale and at the level of the individual farm. Farmers, whether in Oklahoma or Thailand or Zaire, cannot rely on irrigation techniques that put more of the water into gulleys than onto productive fields. Many US farmers are already highly efficient in their water use, but others have become accustomed to plentiful cheap, or even free, water because of local weather or because of fortuitous water treaties and agreements that were made in decades or even centuries past. Many of those agreements are simply going to change, whether farmers wish them to or not; it would be wise for farmers to understand the changes that are coming and make adjustments in advance, rather than being taken by surprise.

In coming weeks, I will have some posts on the types of things that farmers can do to improve their water use, saving both the water and in many cases, a lot of money. From tillage techniques to land-use planning, there are a lot of ways for a farm to make better use of the water it has access to – and the better the use we make of what we have, the more likely we are to be able to keep using it in the future.

Previous post on this Topic Series Below

August 15, 2008: Water – 80% to 90% of Global Freshwater Used for Irrigation; Sustainable?

August 6, 2008: Water – Agriculture and Changing Weather Patterns

July 30, 2008: Water – US Farmers, Count Your Blessings

July 23, 2008: Water - The Next Farm Crisis  

I have a treat for all of you that expressed an interest in my Algae Farming piece from June 9, 2008. 

Mark Edwards, a professor at Arizona State University, has provided us with his speaker notes on Green Algae Strategy: Engineer Sustainable Food and Biofuels which summarizes his many years of research on algae production for food, fuel and other coproducts and solutions.  Mark said, “Algae is not a silver bullet for energy independence and I say in paragraph #2 that energy solutions will be a suite of renewables.  I believe algae present an important piece in the energy and food puzzle.  Algae will play a pivotal role in liquid transportation fuels.”

I have reviewed Marks materials and while I can’t say I agree with all of his comments, (example: “End Subsidies Now!”) I can tell you that he has provided some thought provoking research that has truly opened my eyes to the raw potential that algae provides.  His research is extensive, robust, and comprehensive and deserves further consideration by all of us. 

I have provided links to four (4) PDF documents below.  Please check them out. 

Speaker Notes: http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/green_algae_strategy_paper.pdf

Additional Information:

http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/green_algae_supplemental_1.pdf

http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/green_algae_supplemental_2.pdf

http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/mark_edwards_speaker_brief_2008.pdf

If you like Mark’s work or want to learn more, he also has a book called Green Algae Strategy available for purchase on Amazon.