Farmers hold a key to the worldwide crisis

MEXICO CITY – Experts searching for solutions to the world water crisis at an international summit here on Saturday said much of the problem comes not from dams, lakes or rivers, but an unexpected place: the farm.

Farming accounts for 70 per cent of the water consumed and a majority of its waste, said representatives of 130 nations attending the 4th World Water Forum to discuss water management around the globe. And with 525 million small farms in the world, farmers suffer the most from each problem discussed at the forum: poverty, disease, and the lack of sanitation and clean water.In the developing world, the water crisis is almost totally defined in relation to agriculture, with constant images of drought-blasted fields, withered corn stalks and skinny cattle.”Farmers are central to the whole picture,” said Patrick McCully, Executive Director of International River Network.”They use the majority of the world’s water, and farmers are where most of the world’s poverty is concentrated.”With 2,5 billion people living off the land, change is a daunting task.”If you want your farmers to stop using large amounts of water for irrigation, it’s not enough to just have policies,” said Michel Rocard, the former prime minister of France.”It’s a question of changing the whole agricultural method.”Traditionally, governments have responded to the problems of small farmers – defined as those with plots of 5 acres (2 hectares) or less – by building big dam projects.But McCully says most small farms are so high up in the hills or removed from rivers that they can’t benefit from them.Meanwhile, irrigation systems urgently need attention, according to Ute Collier, of the World Wildlife Fundy.”We can’t afford to waste water in irrigation systems that are 30 to 40 per cent efficient,” he said.”If we could get that part of the equation done, we could probably cut down the number of dams we’re building by half, at least.”Greater efficiency would free up money to help provide clean drinking water and food to small farmers who, despite raising food, constitute most of the 842 million people in the world who go hungry.Participants in this forum have pledged to focus on the world’s poor, many of whom live on less than 21?2 gallons of water per day – one-thirtieth of the daily usage in some developed nations.Collier’s work has focused on improving irrigation for notoriously thirsty cash crops, like cotton and sugarcane, although they are seldom grown on the smallest farms.Agriculture based on fields that temporarily flood is also a major problem because most of that water is wasted through evaporation.Added to these woes are pesticide and herbicide runoff from farm fields that pollute rivers and lakes, as well as soil erosion and salt build-up from irrigation.In Mexico, host of the international forum, farm water disputes are the among the most sensitive issues in US-Mexico relations.In 2004, farmers in Texas were outraged when Mexico failed to let flow 1,3 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is enough water to flood an acre of land under 12 inches of water) into a border river under the terms of a 1944 treaty.Texans also accused Mexico of growing alfalfa a water-hungry feed crop – in desert areas.One state politician suggested that the United States retaliate by reducing its flow into another border river, the Colorado.The long-standing Rio Grande water debt was paid in full by Mexico in 2005 after heavy rains replenished reservoirs.But water tensions linger.Mexico went to court last year to stop the United States from lining one of its irrigation canals with concrete.Mexico claims its farmers had become dependent on water seeping out of the earthen canal, located near the two countries’ border.The case has yet to be resolved.Agriculture cannot be ignored in the water equation, says Gerald Galloway, a civil engineering professor and visiting scholar with the US Army Corps of Engineers.”You have to be able to provide water for agriculture,” he said.- Nampa-APAnd with 525 million small farms in the world, farmers suffer the most from each problem discussed at the forum: poverty, disease, and the lack of sanitation and clean water.In the developing world, the water crisis is almost totally defined in relation to agriculture, with constant images of drought-blasted fields, withered corn stalks and skinny cattle.”Farmers are central to the whole picture,” said Patrick McCully, Executive Director of International River Network.”They use the majority of the world’s water, and farmers are where most of the world’s poverty is concentrated.”With 2,5 billion people living off the land, change is a daunting task.”If you want your farmers to stop using large amounts of water for irrigation, it’s not enough to just have policies,” said Michel Rocard, the former prime minister of France.”It’s a question of changing the whole agricultural method.”Traditionally, governments have responded to the problems of small farmers – defined as those with plots of 5 acres (2 hectares) or less – by building big dam projects.But McCully says most small farms are so high up in the hills or removed from rivers that they can’t benefit from them.Meanwhile, irrigation systems urgently need attention, according to Ute Collier, of the World Wildlife Fundy.”We can’t afford to waste water in irrigation systems that are 30 to 40 per cent efficient,” he said.”If we could get that part of the equation done, we could probably cut down the number of dams we’re building by half, at least.”Greater efficiency would free up money to help provide clean drinking water and food to small farmers who, despite raising food, constitute most of the 842 million people in the world who go hungry.Participants in this forum have pledged to focus on the world’s poor, many of whom live on less than 21?2 gallons of water per day – one-thirtieth of the daily usage in some developed nations.Collier’s work has focused on improving irrigation for notoriously thirsty cash crops, like cotton and sugarcane, although they are seldom grown on the smallest farms.Agriculture based on fields that temporarily flood is also a major problem because most of that water is wasted through evaporation.Added to these woes are pesticide and herbicide runoff from farm fields that pollute rivers and lakes, as well as soil erosion and salt build-up from irrigation.In Mexico, host of the international forum, farm water disputes are the among the most sensitive issues in US-Mexico relations.In 2004, farmers in Texas were outraged when Mexico failed to let flow 1,3 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is enough water to flood an acre of land under 12 inches of water) into a border river under the terms of a 1944 treaty.Texans also accused Mexico of growing alfalfa a water-hungry feed crop – in desert areas.One state politician suggested that the United States retaliate by reducing its flow into another border river, the Colorado.The long-standing Rio Grande water debt was paid in full by Mexico in 2005 after heavy rains replenished reservoirs.But water tensions linger.Mexico went to court last year to stop the United States from lining one of its irrigation canals with concrete.Mexico claims its farmers had become dependent on water seeping out of the earthen canal, located near the two countries’ border.The case has yet to be resolved.Agriculture cannot be ignored in the water equation, says Gerald Galloway, a civil engineering professor and visiting scholar with the US Army Corps of Engineers.”You have to be able to provide water for agriculture,” he said.- Nampa-AP