Drought

I have been fascinated by droughts since I went through a major one while stationed in Okinawa in 1971. That year for some reason the Monsoonal rains did not come and the island went for months with little or no rain. The island had a reservoir that was used by the bases for all their water needs. As the level in the reservoir drew down, all bases went on mandatory water rationing. In other words, water would be shut off for everything every other day. No showers, no drinking water, no brushing teeth, nothing. When the water was turned on, you could shower in it, but had to treat it before drinking it or brushing your teeth. Being good sailors at that time, we substituted cold beer for water on the days the water was shut off. 

One might wonder after reading the above "What is so fascinating about a drought? It is hardship to many, deadly to some". Yes, that is true. My fascination comes from the fact while on the island of Okinawa, surrounded by water, we could not have enough potable water. I still have that fascination, even living in the middle of North America. With over 70% of the Earth covered by water, every year there is somewhere where adequate rain has not fallen. In this year of 2012, with all the technology advances we have made, many farmers continue to have the same irrigation plan - pray for rain.

I have talked about this issue on Facebook before. When I was young, our idealism was to feed the world. We knew we could prove Robert Mathus wrong with the proper farming techniques. We would be the bread basket of the world while sharing our technology with developing countries. We have made great progress in crop hybrids - better yield, less water needed, more disease resistant. However, we have not developed a crop that will grow without water.

We have approached our national water resources with a total lack of imagination. My feeling is there is no excuse for not having adequate water to properly irrigate our fields. The irrigation used in large areas of the county is to deplete our precious aquifers. I see irrigation systems shooting water up in a huge arc in the middle of the day where much of it is lost to evaporation. In short, irrigation has become the Achilles heel of our entire agricultural industry. 

What can be done? I am not an expert, but like I said earlier, I don't see much imagination. So I will use some for solutions which may or may not be tenable. Many years ago in the drought of 1988, I thought we should create water farms in our country. We have had the technology to desalinate water for years now - lets kick it up a notch and do it on a much grander scale. For example, what about setting up a water farm in Death Valley. The water could be pumped in from the Pacific Ocean (Death Valley is so far below sea level, gravity would do most of the work) and be processed at the water farm. The farm would be powered by solar energy as the sun shines most of the time in Death Valley. Water would not have to be potable - just clean enough to be used for irrigation. Water would then become a commodity, a cost of doing agribusiness. If a state is having a dry summer, that state could purchase water to be piped into that state and then resold to farmers.

We recently had a major storm which dropped over two trillion gallons of water on the North Central part of Minnesota. Most of that was run off that went into the Mississippi River or Lake Superior. What if we had been able to capture some of that and use it for irrigation? What if the almost yearly flooding of the Red River could be captured and saved for the dry months ahead? What if we captured some of the Mississippi River water before it went into the Gulf of Mexico and used that for irrigation?

Irrigation in the field would be changed over to drip irrigation where practical. I remember studying about this when I was in school and how efficient is was compared to traditional irrigation. Somehow over the decades, this fell off of the radar screen. Lets rediscover our imagination and improve our irrigation delivery system.

Not to be political on this issue, but what if the trillion dollar stimulus had been used for drought mitigation? We would have looked back and said it was a lot of money, but at least we have something to show for it that will pay dividends for decades to come not only for our country, but also areas of the world that depend on our food.

My fascination with droughts has been replaced with a frustration that we don't know how to deal with them. The current drought is going to cost over 15 billion dollars. People in the world that depend on us will not have the abundance of surplus food that we love to share. We need a resolve to say this drought will be the last that will affect our agribusiness. We need to do better than just hope and pray for rain. If the climate change people are right and this is the start of the new normal, we better come up with something or things will get very bad very fast.

Imagination has always been our calling card. When things got tough, the world always looked to us to solve big problems. We can do this. We can ameliorate suffering. Water is a part of everything we do, it is a big part of each of us. On Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, it is the base of the pyramid. Droughts suck - lets collectively refuse to accept their misery any longer.