Irrigating crops with seawater

Irrigating Crops with Seawater

Brown J. Jed, Glenn Edward P., and O?Leary James W. 1998. Irrigating Crops with

Seawater. Scientific American.

?Irrigating Crops with Seawater? talks about the global problem of finding enough water and land for the world's population to survive. An estimated 494.2 million acres of cropland is needed just to feed the tropics and subtropics for the next 30 years. However, only close to 200 million acres are available. Therefore, new sources of water and land are needed to grow crops. The writers of this article have been testing the prospect of using seawater in agriculture. This seawater agriculture is when salt-tolerant crops are grown using ocean water for irrigation. Desert areas take up 43% of the surface of the earth and this new agriculture technique can be done in deserts. Hugo Boyko and Elisabeth Boyko first used seawater agriculture after World War II. Many different crops have been tested such as barley and the date palm. The writers of this article however have been testing halophytes, which, is a salt-tolerant plant that can be used for food, forage and oilseed crops. They first gathered several hundred halophytes and began testing these plants in the desert of Puerto Pe'asco. They irrigated the plants daily by flooding the fields with seawater from the Gulf of California. The best halophytes produced roughly the yield of alfalfa using freshwater irrigation. In order to show that these halophytes could replace other crops for use they tested to see if the crops could feed livestock. The halophytes have protein and carbohydrates but they contain too much salt. This limits the amount an animal can eat and dilutes the nutritional value. Therefore, the authors decided to use the halophytes as part of a mixed diet for the livestock. The animals? meat taste was not affected, but the animals eating the halophyte-mixed diet drank more water and produced 10 percent less meat.

This new agriculture method has many advantages too. First, it is cheaper to pump the seawater than to pump freshwater. In addition, seawater irrigation does not require any special equipment. The same fields have been irrigated for 10 years with no water buildup or salts in the root zone. Finally, installing the seawater irrigation will not disrupt the ecosystems as much because they are installed on barren or almost barren areas. There are also some disadvantages to irrigating crops with seawater. First, a large quantity of high-salt drainage water that will contain unused fertilizer will be discharged back into the sea. In addition, the seawater agriculture method will not produce as much crops. More water will also be wasted giving the animals water to drink because of the saltiness.

After reading over the article I believe ...

You are currently seeing 50% of this paper.

You're seeing 469 words of 938.

Read the full essay

Alcohol Consequences

Alcohol is a depressant, as it switches off part of the brain, which controls our judgment. The immediate effect of alcohol is to alter mood. When drinking, most people become more relaxed and happy. The more drinks consumed the greater the effect - speech becomes slurred, vision blurred, balance is lost and movements are clumsy. H...

175 reviews

Download

Charles darwin and richard owen

Charles Darwin and Richard Owen Wars occur everyday, whether it be pushing and shoving or shooting and bombing. During the 1800's, a different war of conflict took place. This so-called war between Charles Darwin and Richard Owen circled on the topic of evolution. As much as it would liked to have this essay based upon a physical war...

140 reviews

Download

How mountains are formed

How Are Mountains Formed? Mountains are formed over long periods of time by forces of the earth. Mountains just don?t appear in any place. Most are formed when plates, or huge pieces of the Earth?s crust, pull and push against each other. Great mountain ranges are formed by the movement of tectonic plates. Convection c...

158 reviews

Download

Cd roms

CD:ROM drives are the thing of the future. CD:ROMs are used in almost every computer around the world. CD:ROM stands for COMPACT DISK READ ONLY MEMORY. That means that you can only read information off the disk. Three and a half disks are disks that you can read and wriye infromation from. Five and a quarter can do the same thing , but do no...

21 reviews

Download

Pascals Triangle

The arithmetic triangle was developed in 1653 by Blaise Pascal. He named this triangle after himself and today it is known as Pascal's Triangle. It is an arrangement of certain whole numbers in a triangular pattern. Blaise Pascal was regarded as a brilliant man of his own time. He made contributions to science, mathematics, and religious...

167 reviews

Download