The global picture for freshwater use is fairly grim. Water supplies, as we discussed previously, are large but finite – and we currently tap pretty much all of the easy and cheap sources for freshwater. A relatively recent paper on the use of freshwater in agriculture around the world puts the blame, if blame is the word, on irrigated agriculture, which worldwide accounts for between 80 and 90 percent of freshwater use. (Abstract here).

Currently, about 1.1 billion people lack adequate access to fresh water, and almost half of the world’s population doesn’t have adequate access to water for sanitary purposes. The impact of this lack of fresh water on disease and health is complex but negative, as you can probably imagine. As incomes rise globally, we can expect a demand for better water conditions from the formerly impoverished citizens of many nations – a demand that is likely to redirect water use from agriculture in the short run, as wealthier people are able to bid up what they are willing to pay for clean drinking and cleaning water and thus outcompete local agricultural sectors.

As farmers around the world are forced to pay more for water, governments and land-use planners are likely to have to shift their priorities for land use, including greater use of naturally-watered land for agriculture. It is unlikely that we are going to see many governments tearing down housing developments in order to return the land to agricultural use, but over time the market will make it economically rational to farm where the water is.

In the long run, it is likely that it will require human intervention into the freshwater system to produce more of a now-scarce resource. Remember we said that water is finite? Well, it is – but it is a finite resource that we can create more of, if we really need to. Except for rarities like the Gulf states, nations which are energy rich and water poor at the same time, nations have “made do” with the freshwater supplies available through nature and a modicum of dam-building, river-rerouting civil engineering. The only way we currently can increase our freshwater supply is to desalinate sea water, which is effectively infinite in quantity. Desalination is enormously expensive in terms of energy, however, meaning that even in situations where freshwater is very difficult to acquire, desalination is, at current prices for fresh water and for energy, an option of last resort.

How expensive is desalination? Some analysts say that it is easier to raise a gallon of water vertically by 2000 meters, or to ship it across 1600 kilometers of terrain, than it is to desalinate a gallon of seawater – the most efficient modern plants can desalinate water for about fifty cents per cubic meter. That sounds cheap – and it is, if you just need a drink of water. If you need a billion cubic meters a day for your agricultural irrigation or for your metropolis, it’s another story.

However, the existence of desalination does mean that water is, over the long term, a problem to be solved rather than a crisis that we do not have a solution for. The difference between a crisis and a problem is that problems usually have known solutions; some problems remain problems because we don’t want to do what’s necessary to fix them. In the case of the water problem, there are solutions, desalination among them – they just require us to do things we don’t really want to do. Next week we will conclude our look at water and agriculture with a review of the possible solutions to the problems we face.

A man with food has many worries, but a hungry man has only one.

Anonymous

I know this is kind of a local topic, but some of my friends over at Project C.U.R.E. and Denver for Darfur asked me to let you all know about an upcoming concert here in Colorado.  It sounds like a lot of fun and I am disappointed that I won’t be in town to attend. –But that doesn’t stop you from going, helping a great cause, and meeting Willie Nelson in person!  Here are the details:

WILLIE NELSON TO MEET WITH FOUR LUCKY FANS AS PART OF

VIP PRE-CONCERT RECEPTION TO BENEFIT DARFUR 

Meeting With Fans Part of August 26^th Event at Red Rocks Attended by “DARFUR NOW” Star Adam Sterling 

DENVER – Denver for Darfur and local nonprofit Project C.U.R.E. announced today that Willie Nelson has invited four people onto his tour bus for an exclusive private meeting with the star prior to his concert at Red Rocks on Tuesday, August 26.  The offer comes as part of a VIP pre-show event that Adam Sterling, a star of the movie DARFUR NOW, will attend to help raise funds to send a container filled with $400,000 worth of donated medical supplies to clinics and hospitals in the Darfur region of Sudan. 

“This is a once in a life-time chance for fans to meet with the legend himself on his private tour bus,” said Jeff Bridges, spokesman for Denver for Darfur.  “Mr. Nelson has once again shown he’s a true class act with his generosity to our cause, and we deeply appreciate the work done by Chuck Morris at AEG Live to make this happen.  We’re also delighted that Adam Sterling, one of the stars of the movie DARFUR NOW, will join us at the VIP reception.” 

While Nelson will not attend the pre-show VIP event, a premium sponsor of the event will receive two spots on his tour bus, and the other two spots will go to the winner of a drawing held during the event.  Tickets to the pre-show VIP event cost $250 and include entry into the drawing, as well as food, drinks, and premium seats for the concert. 

Tickets for the event, which will take place between 5:30-7:30pm at the Red Rocks Visitors Center, are available online at www.denverfordarfur.org.  Companies or individuals interested in sponsoring the event and securing two spots on the tour bus can contact Brittany Morris at 303-592-5458. 

The nonpartisan event is open to the public and also features entertainment by musician Nina Storey and a silent auction with several art pieces by Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones, courtesy of Fascination Street Fine Art Galleries.  Sterling will attend the VIP reception to discuss the horrific situation in Darfur and ways that individuals around the globe can help make a difference.  At 24 years old, Sterling successfully passed a bill in California to keep all state funds out of Sudan. 

“With the tragedies in Darfur it is easy to feel helpless and removed from the situation,” said Project C.U.R.E. President and CEO Dr. Douglas Jackson.  “This event allows individuals and communities the opportunity to make a direct difference in the lives of people in this beleaguered and war-torn part of the world.” 

After my last post, let’s get back onto dry land where we can get some farming done. We know that we need to move to an alcohol economy so that we can grow our own fuel instead of being dependent on hostile foreign countries for it. That’s a multi-step process. It would be great if we could just turn a valve somewhere in Missouri and have a billion barrels of ethanol come flowing out, but it doesn’t work that way. We have to develop the ability to make alcohol-based fuels, like ethanol, in economical and environmentally sustainable ways. We also have to give the transportation and heating infrastructure time to adapt to the changing fuel base of the country. A trillion barrels of ethanol does us no good if there are no cars that can burn it; right now we scrape by with adding a bit of ethanol into regular gasoline so that engines can burn it, but the millions of ethanol-friendly cars we need simply aren’t on the road yet. They can’t get on the road without a fuel base already in existence. Corn-based ethanol is the first step on a stairway that leads upwards to fuel independence for our country; it isn’t the whole stairway.

Bad press about the deficiencies of ethanol – some real, some exaggerated, and some just plain invented – has caused some people to sour on the concept of alcohol fuels. This is just wrong; it would be like deciding that basketball is a terrible sport because certain players behaved badly in their hotel rooms after the game. Corn-based ethanol will not be the salvation of our fuel economy, but it will be the first step in developing the cellulosic ethanol technologies that can save us.

Cellulosic ethanol is the production of an alcohol fuel from cellulose. Unlike current ethanol technologies, which requite a very high grade of organic product as feedstock, cellulosic ethanol can use really terrible plants (otherwise useless) and organic matter – stuff that farmers pay to have hauled away from the fields after harvest, it’s so useless at the moment. Cellulosic ethanol can also be created from old phone books, sawmill/paper mill and cotton gin byproducts, lawn clippings and all the fruits and vegetables that your grocer throws away after they expire. (–think flux capacitor from the 80’s movie Back to the Future)  The waste-to-energy potential alone of cellulosic ethanol is staggering – and that’s just using the stuff that we throw away now. Crops formulated for cellulosic ethanol potential, like switchgrass and miscanthus, actually have far more energy per acre than our current corn-based feedstock. Even preliminary test results are impressive. It would take 25% of US cropland converted to corn in order to produce enough conventional ethanol to meet 20% of US energy needs, but only about 9% of cropland planted with miscanthus – a 250% improvement over the yield from corn. And unlike corn, miscanthus is very tolerant of poor soil and weather conditions – it doesn’t need to be planted on prime agricultural land. We can grow it on garbage land that would otherwise simply be barren – expanding the farm economy, rather than just redirecting part of its output into energy.

Cellulosic production is not economically feasible at the moment – but it is getting better every year. The existence of an ethanol economy based on corn is providing the driver for research and development into cellulosic ethanol, because companies, individuals and entrepreneurs can see that there is a market for their product if they can get the processes working. Like the sailing ship economy, corn-based ethanol provides a structure for the development of new and better technologies – technologies that wouldn’t be developed in a vacuum.

Corn won’t get us to the finish line, but we need it in order to get off the starting line.