Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?

by Sandra Postel

Book Overview

For 6,000 years, irrigation has ranked among the most powerful tools of human advancement. The story of settled agriculture, the growth of cities, and the rise of early empires is, to no small degree, a story of controlling water to make the land more prosperous and habitable. Pillar of Sand examines the history, challenges, and pitfalls of irrigated agriculture from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to twentieth-century India and the United States. By...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393319377
• ISBN13: 9780393319378
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent if you aren't an expert

I'm an agronomist and I read this book here in Brazil.As an agronomist,even unemployed today, I must read, about my profession. If you aren't an expert, this book will be an excelent choice.Irrigation is a very important subject.About 40% of world's food comes from irrigated crops.Even so, only about 15-17% of agriculture in the world is under irrigation.In Brazil, as in USA just about 4% of agriculture, uses irrigation. This book is concise and very usefull. I must tell you that this isn't a book for farmers or agronomists.It's for general public reading. The problem is if you are an expert, about this subject.As an agronomist, I found some minor problems in this book.At first, the author, Ms. Sandral Porcel, even showing irrigations problems in places such as old and new Iraq, communist China, modern Egipt and former Aral sea (now just an useless desert); she doesn't shows how bad government by strong men leaves irrigation, to a terrible result. Old and new Iraq were ever misfortuned.There was a nature's problem among climate and soil in Iraq.Even so, in any time, terrible government, was the Iraq's rule.Luckly, there's many oil in Iraq, but when this oil will be over, the iraqis will be by far more misfortuned than today. Communist China was misfortuned by his mad tirant, Mao Tse-Tung.In just 30 years of mad govern, Mao sent to death about 70,000,000 chineses.And irrigation in China, was misfortuned by this mad communist.Today China is by far, at least ten times more rich, but even so, China has no freedom.In fact, China never had any freedom in his thousands years very old history. Modern Egipt inherited an Allah's gift:Nile and his silt.Every year, Nile rive had a flood.Every year, this flood gave fertilizers and made desalinization.All at no cost, in money or man's labor.In 1960 decade then living Egipt's dictator Gamal A. Nasser, with the USSR's money, support and material made the Assuam dam.Even producing electricity at very low price and puting the anual Nile's flood into history, this dam also finished with profitable fishing in many parts of Egipt.Even bigger problems, that came with this dam are salinization and many deseases. Former Aral Sea in former USSR was, a terrible chapter in Soviet's ecocide.At least so terrible as Tchernobyl's nuclear nightmare.In 1917, the Aral sea was full of life.Even in 1950 there was a very great and profitable fishing at that sea.With Moscow's orders, almost all water who went to Aral sea was put to be used for irrigation.At terrible eficience's rates of water, the Aral sea began to be over.In 1980 decade, Aral sea was nothing more than a part of history.Hundreds of species of fishs and marine life, all particular, in the World were extincted forever.And the cotton irrigation was producing salted lands, without no profits at all. Irrigation itself wan't the problem, in any of these cases.The real problem was dictatorship, the lack of freddom.If Egipt is misfortuned by overpopulation or salinizat

Treadle pump

Freemarkets and capitalism will solve the problems of starvation in the world. The treadle pump introduced a low cost and effective mechanical process supplying irrigation water to remote communities in India. Barren and abandoned plots rank among some of the poorest and hungriest people in the world. The treadle pump taps into the abundant and plentiful water beneath the land. About 2 percent of all farmers in developing countries cultivate 2 hectares of land. Many do not earn over $300 a year. There are 1.3 billion people who survive on a dollar a day. Diesel engine pumps cost, at least $350, way out of reach for these small farmers. Modern irrigation has a fatal flaw; it bypasses the majority of the world's farmers. Globally the grain harvest is abundant enough to feed all the people of the world, but most cannot afford the food. One out of seven does not get enough to eat. The vast majority of the world's 840 million undernourished people do not participate in the integrated global economy. The surest and most direct way of reducing hunger among the rural poor is to raise their productive capacities directly. Access to irrigation, is one sure way of boosting small-farm productivity. With a secure water supply, farmers can invest in higher yield seeds, drip irrigation, harvest additional crops, and profit from surplus. The treadle pump is a human-powered irrigation device and resembles a stairmaster exercise machine, the user pedals up and down on two long poles, or threadles. The pedaling motion activates a rope-and-pulley with two plungers, each positioned within a metal cylinder. A suction inlet at the bottom welds the twin cylinders together. On the upward pumping stroke, groundwater is sucked up into the cylinders while water from the previous stroke is expelled directly into a field channel. The volume of water pumped in an hour depends on the distance to the water table. Each pump can irrigate a fifth of a hectacre and costs about $35; net returns average more than $100 per group, so farmers can recoup their investment in less than a year. With this simple solution farmers have purchased more than 1.2 million treadle pumps and raised the productivity of more than a quarter-million hectacres and injected $325 million a year into the poorest parts of the Bangladeshi economy. Between 1975 and 1995, a 136 percent increase to Bangladesh's irrigated area occurred. The treadle pump's low cost, ease of repair, and elegant design make it a successful innovation. The million-plus treadle pumps not used in Bangladesh are support by 73 manufacturers, 830 dealers, and 2,500 installers. Project world market numbers are estimated at 10 million: 6 million in India, 3 million in Bangladesh, and 1 million spread among Asian and African countries. Ten million treadle pumps could add $1 billion a year to small farmers net income. Technology will solve the problem of water scarcity by : implementing drip irrigation, constructin

This book should be required reading for everyone

The expansion of irrigation world wide has made a major contribution to increased food production, but for many years the World Watch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute have called attention to the danger of falling water tables and rivers that no longer reach the sea. Although China increased grain production from 90m tons in 1950 to 392 million tons in 1998, this was achieved at the price of rapidly falling water tables with the result that consumption exceeded production in four of the last five years; very soon China will be importing 30 - 50 million tons of grain annually, putting pressure on world grain prices. As wheat requires 1000 tons of water to produce one ton of wheat, the key challenges are: "how can we meet growing human needs for irrigation water without destroying the health of rivers, lakes and other aquatic systems? How can we grow enough food in a sustainable manner?" History tells us that most irrigation-based civilizations fail. The question we must address is "Will our civilization be different?" Settled agriculture started 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia but around 4,000 BC enterprising Sumerian farmers in the Fertile Crescent - present day Iraq - diverted water from the Euphrates to prevent crops withering before harvest. Irrigation allowed farmers to grow an extra crop and produce surpluses leading to an expanding population and a flourishing civilization but also bringing soil degradation from salt left by evaporation. By the 16th century the Fertile Crescent, was little more than a salty wasteland. 20% of the irrigated land today suffers from salt build up; land lost offsets increased productivity from expanding irrigation. The solution is to use just the amount of water required during the growing season and just enough to leach away salts in the root zone and then to reuse drainage water for crops with a higher salt tolerance such as cotton or tomatoes for canning or paste. The rise and fall of civilizations closely follows the success and ultimate failure of irrigation. In 1800, global irrigated area was about the size of Austria, while today it is 30 times larger, provides 40% of our food, and is the foundation for feeding 70 million new mouths each year. However, our present day base for food production is highly vulnerable as groundwater is over-pumped and salinization spreads. Increasing land productivity is our main hope at a time when water scarcity and water misuse are the biggest threats to global food production. Food prices are at historically low levels making it difficult to justify new investments in irrigation systems. Many important food-producing regions are sustained by the hydrological equivalent of deficit financing. While water shortages are the main problem, they are compounded by global warming bringing a changing climate, shifting rainfall patterns, and more frequent hurricanes and monsoons. In addition low-lying agricultural land is lost as sea levels rise from thermal expansion of the

More crop per drop - fewer drops for all

Sandra Postel goes well beyond a simple answer to the question posed by her subtitle 'Can the Irrigation Miracle last?' This book is an important resource for anybody trying to understand why water scarcity is such a major and escalating problem at the dawn of this century. Rather than adding to the generalist debate of the economists on water as a commodity or the projection into future problems presented by policy analysts and environmentalists, Postel analyzes particular examples in the past to explain the present and to make recommendations for the future. Postel opens by reviewing major early societies in history, from Mesopotamia to Babylon, Egypt to ancient China, showing how they developed into major civilizations and why they fell. Yes, fell. Almost all great irrigation-based civilizations (Egypt being a rare exception) collapsed as a result of reallocation and overuse of water resources resulting in salinization, silting, soil degradation, etc. Have we learned any lessons form the past? Postel argues that it does not seem so. She gives a factual account of a wide range of irrigation systems of the modern era, comparing methodologies and results to those in the past. The development of huge irrigation areas in India (Punjab), China and the US have either already demonstrated a repeat of the old mistakes or will do so in the near future. The groundwater tables are overused without being replenished and aquifers are tapped that have little chance to recover even in the long term. She describes two kinds of water wars: farms versus cities and nature and irrigation versus water scarcity. Water is reallocated and shifted from one use to another, but in some way, we are all living downstream from somebody else. Robbing Peter to pay Paul has its limits: the earth's fresh water resources are finite. Against the backdrop of increasing water scarcity around the globe, Postel sees as humanity's main challenge the growing of enough food for our future population in a sustainable manner. She describes the pitfalls and the short-term fixes that will result in even greater problems in the future. At the same time, given the substantial increase in crop yield thanks to irrigation, she is realistic in her assessment that agriculture will not be able to do without it. As a result, the objective will have to be to reduce the amount of water we use for agriculture while at the same time producing more crop per drop of water. Postel has traveled the world to review water systems, big and small, wasteful and efficient. Water needs saving in all areas of use, industrial, private and in agriculture. As agriculture uses by far the most of the global water resources, savings here will have major impacts down the line. She demonstrates on the basis of examples and statistics what is possible and how irrigation in agriculture can become highly effective and water conserving and restraint. She touches on the need to develop 'water-thrifty' plants, but, unf

Great look at water and agriculture

and shows our vulnerability as we are trying to feed more and more people with less and less available water. I found it a very educational book.