My chemistry professor was saying in the mid 2000s that water had already become the new Gold.
Collection of rainwater is never an option in farming. The reason they are irrigating is because there isn't enough rain. To capture enough rain to facilitate irrigation requires devices as large or larger than the fields to be irrigated. Rain barrels aren't enough. Agriculture measures water in acre-feet.
So you turn field B into a pond to hold water for field A. How deep is that pond? If it is only a couple feet you will loose all your water to evaporation. You need deeper water. You need a dam. So you better be good at concrete retaining walls, or hope there is a convenient river valley on your plot.
1. To scale, you are really trying to capture water in the soil itself
2. This means taking advantage of terrain features to manage patterns of flow. The idea here is to slow down flow so that it cycles through the planting areas so that the water can infiltrate instead of running off.
3. Mosquitos is a problem if pooling remains for more than three days. The solution here is to add organic compounds (mulching) to cover the areas being pooled. It effectively makes the water go below the surface, and have the added benefit of carrying composting nutrients deeper into the soil.
4. Soil’s ability to hold water depends upon a number of factors. Among them is how much carbon material is there, which includes the remains of root systems. Living, healthy soil will act as a sponge and release water to the plant as needed.
5. So protecting soil erosion is a huge part of conserving water. If the rain is carrying off soil because it is running off too fast, there is never a build up of soil to act as a sponge.
6. You may need to plant more than a monocrop. At least plant ground cover to protect the farm’s soil fertility.
7. Certain soil amendments can have lasting effect on its ability to absorb water. Biochar — charcoal that have been prepared in a way to make it suitable for plants — have the property of absorbing water and releasing it as needed. They also form habitats for microbes and fungi, which can also enhance plant growth.
8. Heavy fertilizing may be contributing to soil loss. They don’t help accumulate the kind of properties that help soil absorb water.
Here is an example paper about it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biolog...
It is not as if this stuff is not well known
I used to be a Farm Manager, and did a 3 year apprenticeship in Biodyniamic Ag.
I know of very few crops that can remain fallow/non-irrigated and still do well come harvest, they exist but are hardly going to be widespread much less in AZ. And while there are practices that can be undertaken to conserve water (cover crops, large scale mulching, drip irrigation) all of which I have personal experience in utilizing, this was more about how to ensure the barrier of entry is excluded to those who would otherwise just deplete it in a tragedy of the commons manner.
Let me explain in more detail.
My idea was based on the following: to initially access the aquifer you must install another metered pump that must remain in operation and re-pump an equal amount that you pumped out of the table in earlier seasons throughout the year/season back into the source and failing to return it will not just incur costs/penalties but also deny you access to it.
When I was a Farm manager in Maui we had a similar issue with nearby dry land Taro growers, as a Biodynamic farm we have more active cultures with various water needs, so we had a large reservoir (20000 gallon capacity tank attached to a sand sand based filtration system) that ensured we could remain operational for extended periods of time of drought as we captured rain water as a ritual, but we could also replenish the source if need-be and often did to purge and clean the tanks. They can get moldy due to stagnation, and water is very important in Biodynamics, specifically that which if it is perturbed--its mainly just for water aeration.
The water source we captured from was a creek that came from Haleakala and was gravity fed to our cultures so it was considered sacred, and we were Haoles so we always had to make an even greater effort to maintain good relations with our Native neighbors. Nothing was ever good enough, but we did it anyway.
That meant fixing their neglected or poorly built dams/jetty, and offsetting their water needs when Maui electric shut off the water sources for maintenance and went way longer then they projected (Welcome to Hawaii!).
I lost all of my greenhouse starters so that our neighbors could have water that season and have something to bring to Market and I emptied my tank several times to do so and had to get creative about how I'd water my other active cultures with rain water and had to make due to continue to bring product to Market in order to keep our 1:1 profit sharing model with our vendors/produce managers.
We would was always be seen as foreigners taking resources, despite having been the only Farm on the Islands to take in people with special needs as part of our Program (Camphill), who we built an Art Studio for and then bought a large Home for that took money from our Ag program I was supposed to be managing. And after many 70+ work weeks we finally made them profitable for the first time in their entire existence proving the model can work, but requires EXTENSIVE amounts of hard-work, dedication, and sacrifice.
We often gave away any excess food we couldn't sell or had on hand after we fed our staff to the local food bank. I lost money that year as I had to stop getting paid after my 7th month there, and I often had to fight the Department of Ag in audits so much that I just paid out of pocket to finish the irrigation system myself.
I also made an effort to hire local people, of all colours, rather than my initial desire to take on European applicants who were already trained and I could take them on as non-paid apprentices working the 40+ work weeks, as I had.
I realized it was a lost-cause and that racism/exclusion is prevalent and cannot work due to issues that extend far before my Time there, so I resigned and left on a high (despite massive burn-out) only to be given an affirmation of Pono as I left from Maui.
The point is that collaboration with your neighbors is far more important than any water conserving or well mentioned actions ever will be. And that is how this how sustainability should be approached.
Because the truth is, Nestle has been doing this for some time, some large Multi-national could just show up buy the source, deplete what was there and then walk away and use the losses as a tax write-off. Then come back and buy back all the surrounding area in distress for cheap and recover any costs and hold it in their portfolio as assets to leverage in some other capacity.
A farmer can convert now, and pay the extra price of doing so, while missing out on the easier aquifer water.
Or, they can do what everyone else does: pump now, then convert when their hand is forced.
Absent some group collaboration, this bad deal is the correct choice: anything else would be worse for an individual farmer.
That's a Nash equilibrium.
Not addressing the short vs long term thinking about opium, since it's unrelated, but I don't think your analysis is correct; the Pashtuns have been growing this crop for literally thousands of years.
I tried looking up information on the Pashtuns and pre-modern cultivation of opium. So far, I have only found articles and papers talking about significant cultivation since the 1950s. I have found articles describing this as a fairly complex issue.
I am interested in understanding the traditional farming practices of the Pashtuns, and how and why it changed. Is there anything written about that you know off the top of your head?
I think another point that the Nash equilibrium brings up is that all actors are non-cooperative. I thought I was making a point that self-interest would make rainwater harvesting rational.
I think rainwater harvesting is rational, having seen good designs, and what it can do. It may even cost less than the solar panels, pump, digging out a reservoir, and the drilling... but I don’t think I know the exact numbers to make that kind of comparison.
There is also an assumption that you choose between one or the other, rather than a succession, where one method is employed in the small scale and gradually replaces the other.
Another issue is whether it would scale.
I had not even brought up how specific soil amendments and practices can greatly increase the water retention ability of the water —- which is also a part of rainwater harvesting.
I don’t know how well rainwater harvesting scale to industrial agriculture. I _think_ it can be scalable. Looking at the harvesting practices, you are scarring the head and collecting the sap. So it probably does not require planting in a way to optimize for using a combine to harvest.
Finally, I also recall the farmer’s mindset. I was watching this show about American farmers. One thing they say a lot is how they make gambles. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it does not. (Which I can say a lot about with regenerative agriculture that is also resilient against a single point of failure). So introducing new practices is risky for the farmer, and they would probably rather build on what they know works. As such, they would narrow their perceived viable choices, and it gets to the conditions for the Nash equilibrium.
Will the neighbor's child, who has become a multi-millionaire, help another neighbor, whose kids are not as fortunate as that kid? I ask this question, not to bring in some silly contrast.
There is a deeper issue, since Arrow's impossibility theorem is shown to be equivalent to a special case of the Nash Equilibrium. As a consequence, Arrovian dictator (in social choice framework) is equivalent to shared compromise in Nash cooperative game. Unless there is a dictator to force cooperation, it is just a talk.
In an extreme, where everyone is poor and struggling for drinking water, you can see some cooperation. As long as the gravy train runs, one just milks it.
I think there will always be some people who are going to be ruthless, but by and large, I think without that conditioning and given the choice, many people would prefer doing things that are fair for other people.
It's interesting that you think this, as there really isn't a large body of strong examples of this behaviour. The person you were responding to came pretty close to something optimistic (there are solutions) but still realistic (most people are not nice to strangers).
Classic capitalism-aggrandizing faux-environmentalism.