Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet (www.NourishingthePlanet.com).
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.
While I would never deny anyone the right to pursue their own best interests, especially by providing more food for themselves and their communities, tapping into ground water is fraught with the potential for collateral damage to surface water users and to later generations when the resource runs out.
Many ground water basins are not being recharged at a rate that replaces extracted water, and many are relics of the last ice-age and are not being recharged at all. Ideally this information is taken into account when deciding to mine ground water. But to my knowledge it rarely is, as food production always trumps other concerns.
All of which makes me a bit conflicted with projects that focus on adding more inputs into the system of food production rather than focusing on making better use of current inputs (for instance, lining irrigation channel to reduce water loss, etc).