Water For Every Farm

What Hacker News says

1. mountaintimefrmSep 2022
   Probably the best documented example of it working is in the Loess Plateau in China. John D Liu has a couple documentaries on it, here is one: https://youtu.be/IDgDWbQtlKI

   A good example of a similar project in India, as covered by Andrew Millison: https://youtu.be/jDMnbeW3F8A

   Sepp Holzer did a similar project in Portugal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUryneCjxV4 ...I believe he also did some pretty large projects in the middle east, but I can't find any vids on them at the moment.

   Geoff Lawton has done a ton of projects like this, but maybe not at the landscape wide scales like the projects above.

   Probably the best book on the basic principles of how to do it - Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. Also the book Water For Every Farm by P.A. Yeomans is pretty good as well, but not as accessible of a read.

   TLDR - To keep desert monsoons from flooding areas downstream, dig a landscape wide network of swales and basins to catch, soak and sink the water into the soil. Properly dug, such earthworks recharge aquifers while stopping flooding and erosion.

   Show morethread
2. greenie_beansAug 2022
   or go directly to the source: water for every farm by p.a. yeomans
   thread
3. schiffernOct 2014
   >We don't have a solution for agriculture yet

   True, and not just talking about water. All aspects of "conventional" farming (aquifer pumping, mined fertilizers, fossil fuel-derived pesticides, diesel, etc) are by their nature only temporary solutions.

   The start of a sustainable water management strategy might be P.A. Yeoman's Water For Every Farm[1], basically designing around land topology to harvest and store/infiltrate rainwater. Modern agriculture shunts rainwater off the land as fast as possible, maximizing runoff so that tractors can drive on it sooner.

   Here's P.A. Yeoman's strategy (in cheesy 1950s educational video style): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE-tJLQDZT4

   [1]https://www.amazon.com/Water-For-Every-Farm-Yeomans/dp/14382...

   Show morethread
4. schiffernDec 2013
   >until the energy costs of desalination are low enough.

   Really? You think desalination is the ultimate goal? I much prefer free, ecosystem-provided desalination (aka rooftop rain-water harvesting).

   As for agricultural water use, I highly suggest picking up a copy of P.A. Yeoman's classic Water For Every Farm. It details how proper runoff management, evaporation control, and correctly-scaled earthworks can provide reliable water availability with near-zero energy inputs [other than the sun, of course].

   As for dams, it's not as simple as "all dams are bad". Oversized dams that are out of scale with the local hydrology are the problem.

   But, I guess some people would prefer to re-invent the Earth's water cycle!

   Show morethread