Irrigating Crops With Seawater :: Freshwater Essays

Brown J. Jed, Glenn Edward P., and O&8217Leary James W. 1998. Irrigating Crops with Seawater. Scientific Ameri peck. Irrigating Crops with Seawater talks slightly the global problem of finding enough water and land for the domain&8217s population to survive. An estimated 494.2 million acres of cropland is needed just to consume the tropics and subtropics for the next 30 years. However, only close to cc million acres ar available. Therefore, bare-ass sources of water and land are needed to grow crops. The writers of this article draw been testing the prospect of use 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 step to the fore of the earth and this new agriculture technique can be through with(p) in deserts. Hugo Boyko and Elisabeth Boyko startle used seawater agriculture after piece War II. Many different crops have been tested such as barley and the date palm. T he 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 Peasco. They irrigated the plants day-by-day by flooding the handle with seawater from the Gulf of California. The best halophytes produced roughly the yield of alfalfa using freshwater irrigation. In order to scan 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&8217 meat taste was not affected, but the animals alimentation the halophyte-mixed diet drank more water and produced 10 percent less meat. This new agricu lture 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 bequeath not disrupt the ecosystems as much because they are installed on devoid or almost barren areas. There are also some disadvantages to irrigating crops with seawater. First, a large step of high-salt drainage water that will contain unused fertilizer will be discharged back into the sea.