Before we thought the water supply would last forever (or at least
several political cycles), we had dry farming. As the worst drought in
decades grips the U.S., dry farming is getting a second look.
Farmers see the horizon, and there's not much water on it (The "global water shortage is now 'chronic'" according to a UN report). In the U.S., the federal government has added at least 218 more counties to the list of natural disaster areas, now more than half of the total counties in the U.S. are low on water.
Dry farming, while not designed to counter the worst droughts, "evokes the image of a wet sponge covered with cellophane," writes Brie Mazurek, the online education manager at the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).
By tapping the moisture stored in soil to grow crops, rather than using irrigation or rainfall during the wet season, dry-land farming was a staple of agriculture for millennia in places like the Mediterranean, and much of the American West, before the rise of dams and aquifer pumping.
During the rainy season, farmers break up soil then saturated with water. Using a roller, the first few inches of the soil are compacted and later form a dry crust, or dust mulch, that seals in the moisture against evaporation.
Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=growing-crops-with-no-water-the-old-2012-08
Farmers see the horizon, and there's not much water on it (The "global water shortage is now 'chronic'" according to a UN report). In the U.S., the federal government has added at least 218 more counties to the list of natural disaster areas, now more than half of the total counties in the U.S. are low on water.
Dry farming, while not designed to counter the worst droughts, "evokes the image of a wet sponge covered with cellophane," writes Brie Mazurek, the online education manager at the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).
By tapping the moisture stored in soil to grow crops, rather than using irrigation or rainfall during the wet season, dry-land farming was a staple of agriculture for millennia in places like the Mediterranean, and much of the American West, before the rise of dams and aquifer pumping.
During the rainy season, farmers break up soil then saturated with water. Using a roller, the first few inches of the soil are compacted and later form a dry crust, or dust mulch, that seals in the moisture against evaporation.
Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=growing-crops-with-no-water-the-old-2012-08
No comments:
Post a Comment