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Subject: Article on Agricultural Techniques
Hugo    7/21/2008 2:16:51 PM
I am somewhat fascinated with drip irrigation's use in water poor climates - perhaps because I am originally from one myself. Anyway if anyone else shares my interest, I thought this article from the NYT might be of interest. Israel is the world leader in this technology and apparently has the most efficient agricultural sector in terms of output per water use. If I ever make it out there I'd like to visit your farms. Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water By ANDREW MARTIN CAIRO — Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water. For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples. Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math. The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further. “The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita,” Alan R. Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.” Losing confidence in world markets, these nations are turning anew to expensive schemes to maintain their food supply. Djibouti is growing rice in solar-powered greenhouses, fed by groundwater and cooled with seawater, in a project that produces what the World Bank economist Ruslan Yemtsov calls “probably the most expensive rice on earth.” Several oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia, have started searching for farmland in fertile but politically unstable countries like Pakistan and Sudan, with the goal of growing crops to be shipped home. “These countries have the land and the water,” said Hassan S. Sharaf Al Hussaini, an official in Bahrain’s agriculture ministry. “We have the money.” In Egypt, where a shortage of subsidized bread led to rioting in April, government officials say they are looking into growing wheat on two million acres straddling the border with Sudan. Economists and development experts say that nutritional self-sufficiency in this part of the world presents challenges that are not easily overcome. Saudi Arabia tapped aquifers to become self-sufficient in wheat production in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the kingdom had become a major exporter. This year, however, the Saudis said they would phase out the program because it used too much water. “You can bring in money and water and you can make the desert green until either the water runs out or the money,” said Elie Elhadj, a Syrian-born author who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic. Egypt, too, has for decades dreamed of converting huge swaths of desert into lush farmland. The most ambitious of these projects is in Toshka, a Sahara Desert oasis in a scorched lunar landscape of sand and rock outcroppings. When the Toshka farm was started in 1997, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, compared its ambitions to building the pyramids, involving roughly 500,000 acres of farmland and tens of thousands of residents. But no one has moved there, and only 30,000 acres or so have been planted. The farm’s manager, Mohamed Nagi Mohamed, says the Sahara is perfect for farming, as long as there is plenty of fertilizer and water. For one thing, the bugs cannot handle the summer heat, so pesticides are not needed. “You can grow anything on this land,” he said, showing off fields of alfalfa and rows of tomatoes and grapes, shielded from the sun by gauzy white netting. “It’s a very nice project, but it needs a lot of money.” Mr. Mubarak calls his country’s growing population an “urgent” problem that has exacerbated the food crisis. The population grows about 1.7 percent annually, considerably slower than a generation ago but still fast enough that it is on pace to double by 2050. Adding 1.3 million Egyptians each year to the 77 million squeezed into an inhabited area roughly the size of Taiwan is a daunting prospect for a country in which 20 percent of citizens already live in poverty. One recent morning in the Cairo slum of Imbaba, people crammed in front of a weathered green bakery shack for their daily rations of subsidized bread, a pita-like loaf called baladi that sells for less than a penny, so cheap that some Egyptians feed it
 
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Shirrush    Not exacly a flying pig moment...   7/24/2008 7:58:29 AM
...But it's good to see that sometimes the NYT has something meaningful to say.
Anyhoo, thanks for the article.
The bottom line is that, yes, we've got work to do. The war after the next war will be a struggle for water, its generals will be scientists and engineers, its heroes will be geologists and inventors, it's weapons will be money, technology and yellow things, and, hopefully, the winners will be all of us.
In the meantime, Islam is on the move again. In their script, food and water must be taken from those that have it, forwards, and not managed and conserved. Fact.
I'm ready. My shovel and my microscope are right next to where my gun is. 

 
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Hugo       7/27/2008 11:27:26 AM
I agree with you, successul nations, particulalry in your region of the world, will master the use, allocation and maximization of water resources.  You seem to be doing well. 
 
Perhaps Egypt will start a war with its neighbours - potentially islamic (Sudan) - and then its government can find an alternative scapegoat.  
 
Meanwhile the Arabs don't seem to have understood that infinite population growth in a region with seriously finite resources might lead to instability - in which case Israel will probably be used as a whipping boy for the radicals.  Whatever happens I don't like the long-term outlook of that region.

 
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battar    Fruitful   7/27/2008 3:21:33 PM
It isn't just the Arabs who don't understand the problems of infinte population growth. The Bible says "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth". I once asked a religious scholar, what happens when the earth is replenished and full up? After all, this commandment is an exponential curve. He didn't have an answer. (hardly surprising).
 
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Shirrush    Pop Dynamics 101   7/27/2008 4:39:22 PM

Battar, there's no such thing as infinite population growth. The exponential Malthusian curve as never been observed in Nature, and most animal populations' growth goes along a logistic curve, in which the upper horizontal asymptote, K, is the environment's carrying capacity.
What's special about human populations though, is the fact that they can, and will, affect K.
We could be able to jack it up some if we stop, for a minute, to build suburbs on prime farming land and start getting serious about capturing runoff rainwater, while the Arabs are generally pulling it down, as exemplified by the loss of arable land to destructive agricultural practices and poor land management in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the overgrazing and deforestation prevalent wherever Islam holds sway.
 
There's absolutely no reason, or even any decency, to tell people how many offspring they're allowed to have.
The Rabbis are right. Having children is everyone's right and duty.
China's appalling one-child policy is a demographic disaster, and the skewness of the Chinese population's sex ratio will have cataclysmic consequences, such as the end of Peace in Asia, and a World-wide recession.

 
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battar    No chocolate cookies   7/28/2008 2:56:59 PM
Shirrush,
              I may be mistaken, but I believe that Malthus predicted that populations will grow until everyone is living at subsitence level.  That means no chocolate chip cookies for you or me. I like chocolate chip cookies. China wouldn't be a demographic success story if they had no familiy planning policy, either. I'm not saying people should be restricted in the number of children they want to fill the house with. I myself am the seventh child (and last) in my family. I am saying that people should be educated to make responsible choices about their own families, and politicians who call family planning education "racism" and "anti-semitism" should be discouraged from holding any public position of responsibility. Teaching young Moslems and orthodox Jews that "it is gods will that they should have as many children as possible" is irresponsible and ensures (relative) misery for the next generation. Teaching youth that looking out for their children is their own, and not god's, responsibility is not politically correct nowadays. 
Where do you get all this knowledge about the enviroment from? Are you a biologist? Or do you just read "Scientific American" or "New Scientist"?
 
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Hugo       7/28/2008 6:16:44 PM
The Bible was also written in the day when many young children didn't survive to their first birthday. 
 
One can argue that it's immoral to restrict one's freedom to procreate (I would) but I think a solid argument can also be made that it's irresponsible to bring children into the world for which you have no means to provide for materially.  

 
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battar    Teach the children well   7/29/2008 2:47:22 PM
Well said, Hugo.
 
The ultra-orthodox community in Israel encourage their members to marry at an early age and raise large families, while at the same time refusing them access to any education which could ensure them a position where they could earn enough money to support their double-figure offspring. The rabbis tell the young students that "god will provide", then go and demand that the state fund child allowance from wage-earners taxes. Is it any wonder that they earn mighty little sympathy from those who pay the tax? The child allowance payment that the state gives to an unemployed father of 9 children is more than I earn in a full time job. (After tax). They are not doing themselves any favours. 
 
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jastayme3       7/29/2008 4:42:35 PM

Well said, Hugo.

 

The ultra-orthodox community in Israel encourage their members to marry at an early age and raise large families, while at the same time refusing them access to any education which could ensure them a position where they could earn enough money to support their double-figure offspring. The rabbis tell the young students that "god will provide", then go and demand that the state fund child allowance from wage-earners taxes. Is it any wonder that they earn mighty little sympathy from those who pay the tax? The child allowance payment that the state gives to an unemployed father of 9 children is more than I earn in a full time job. (After tax). They are not doing themselves any favours. 

Battar, 9 children is in eighteen years nine extra bullet attractors away from your son.

 
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jastayme3       7/29/2008 4:45:04 PM




Well said, Hugo.



 



The ultra-orthodox community in Israel encourage their members to marry at an early age and raise large families, while at the same time refusing them access to any education which could ensure them a position where they could earn enough money to support their double-figure offspring. The rabbis tell the young students that "god will provide", then go and demand that the state fund child allowance from wage-earners taxes. Is it any wonder that they earn mighty little sympathy from those who pay the tax? The child allowance payment that the state gives to an unemployed father of 9 children is more than I earn in a full time job. (After tax). They are not doing themselves any favours. 




Battar, 9 children is in eighteen years nine extra bullet attractors away from your son.




PS. And yes I know all about how Ultra-Orthadox are free from conscription. Which is probably regretable
as it makes Jews into dependants on their neighbors again. But that might change and in any case they can still
volunteer.
 
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battar    Prayer-shawls and uniforms   7/30/2008 3:01:37 PM
Jastayme,
                 I've been in the IDF. Neither I nor most of my fellow commanders would want ultra-orthodox yobs in our units. They won't mix socially, have funny ideas about what and when they will eat, they are generally clueless about everyday common knowledge becasue they don't watch television or read newspapers or listen to the radio and he brighter of the secular soldiers are always picking arguments with them over religious topics. This is based on my encounters with the few orthodox (not even ultra...) soldiers that I have met in uniform. The IDF top brass have admitted to the powers-that-be that they don't want to deal with the problems that conscripting orthodox soldiers would bring about. None of these religious children will be competing with my son for a job, either - their education doesn't provide them with any relevant skills. But they will be living off my sons' taxes.
 
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