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Saline Agriculture As the Future of Food
Damien1972 writes "To confront rising salinization, authors writing in the journal Science recommend increased spending on saline agriculture, which proposes growing salt-water crops to feed the world. Jelte Rozema and Timothy Flowers believe that salt-loving plants known as halophytes could become important crops, especially in areas where the salt content of the water is about half that of ocean water."
I am sick of salting my popcorn anyway.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Next step, salt water taffy farms.
I love halophytes...especially wrapped around raw fish and rice.
I'd like to recommend the book "Collapse," by Jared Diamond (the author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel," another book I'd recommend). He spends several pages explaining the damage that salinization has done to farmland in places like Australia. It's kind of an eye opener about how wasteful irrigation policies have ended up basically permanently ruining large ares of Australia's farmlands by drawing salt up into the soil.
The damage, once done, is ridiculously expensive to fix, so we need to find crops that can grow in the unusable land, especially as the world's population grows -- especially its meat-eating population as third world countries acquire first world living standards, which multiplies the need for vegetable crops.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I love to hear about innovations like this. However it can be taken a step further.
Not only can we make crops resistant to salty conditions, we can breed them to fix the soil and remove that salt. Bioremediation works on all sorts of poisoned soils, removing all sorts of poisons.
Hell, we could have pre-salted potato chips!
Sounded interesting until..
The only crop they suggest grow is Salicomia bigelovii crops.. Good for making soap but not so great for eating..
What we really need is more research into GM crops which the environmentalists hate for some reason.
It's proven to work in the past and has 30 year track record of bringing food into places where it was once not liveable.
The article states that only 1% of terrestrial plants can grow in such conditions and it names exactly one crop that might, theoretically, be valuable for its oil. Wow. That's a pretty slim basis on which to try to feed humanity.
...is there anyone still denying global warming?
Yes. Yes there are -- which you damned well should know if you've ever read nearly ANY Slashdot science discussion. And thank you so much for feeding the delusional trolls so that yet ANOTHER science discussion will be hijacked in a "debate" between people who do and don't believe in the issue.
Yes, thank you, because it's largely irrelevant to the issue of salinization. Salinization is about excessive irrigation. It has little to do with global climate change directly.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So why don't we just artificially mutate the human race, to have have gills, so that we can all just live in the ocean?
And eat coral and seaweed, and stuff like that.
If we lived in the ocean, we might more enjoy eating stuff that grows there . . . like each other!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It's got electrolytes!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus
Read some Roy Spencer, he knows his stuff. The way I see science is there is fact and theory, and no one should be making a policy decision over a theory. The warming we are seeing now (I suspect) is due to the Earth's position relative to the Sun and and increase in solar activity (sun spots, flares, etc.) And there really isn't as much CO2 in the air as you think:
http://www.citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081120/GJNEWS02/711203981/-1/CITNEWS08
Furthermore, if you do a search on youtube (cant get there from work or I would give you a link) you can find a special from MSNBC from '05 or '03 (I think) that shows a close-up of Gore's infamous hockey stick, that shows a rise in CO2 is result of a rise in temperature, not a cause of it.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
The future of food is exactly like the present. There's plenty of food. There's so much that they're converting it into transportation fuel to prop up the price of the food. They're subsidizing food production because farmers can't pay their bills because huge surpluses drag down the market price. Obesity is a growing international problem because there's so much food.
LOL, modded troll for answering a question
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Is anyone still subsidizing corn-based ethanol so we can save about 2% on carbon emissions per mile, while we drain those midwestern aquifers even faster than we were before?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I think that you're missing the fact that the majority of Africa has been an unliveable dessert hellhole that can't support human life for pretty much all of human history. What happens when you plant corn in Zimbabwe today is the same as what happened when you planted corn 1000 years ago there. It doesn't grow cuz it's too hot and there's not enough water. No crops means no animals which means no meat and veggies for the humans and the result is starving people in poverty. So either grow seaweed, eat it, and like or move somewhere better.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
We have vast excesses of food in this world. There are now more fat people than starving people.
Talk to any farmer (as I do, living in a rural area) and the problem they face is not production, but stimulating consumption to help increase demand and prices.
Feedlots are highly inefficient ways to process food. Take 20 to 50 food units of grain, put them through a feedlot and get one food unit out. A vast % of the food stream is handled this way. Reducing feedlot meat consumption by 20% and the world's food supply will probably double.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
yes, why don't we convert more wetlands, seeing how well Louisiana fared with Katrina!
This article (at Mongabay, not Science) starts out strong, saying "accessible and unpolluted freshwater is a necessity for every nation's stability and well-being." Unfortunately, that first sentence was the last reference in the article to the issue of pollution or non-salt contamination.
What we really need is the ability to farm directly in the ocean without producing inedible food. The article's referenced halophytes (plants that can grow in salt water) are just one piece of the issue, as the ocean is also filled with other contaminants (mercury, industrial waste, and so very much more). We can probably do some farming with net-like filters around enclosed areas (similar to the way most fish farming works). Wikipedia calls this "open cage aquaculture." However, these filters can only get so much, and once you get complex enough to need a treatment facility, you've defeated the purpose of farming in the ocean (unless you treat the whole ocean...).
The referenced Science Magazine article gets published tomorrow, but you can see related documents by searching for the authors (Rozema and Flowers) and salination. Perhaps the actual article will discuss this issue...
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
What kind of edibles does this really produce? I don't wanna eat no stinkweed.
Greening the desert
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
I guess you have to treat these people like alcoholics. The first step is admitted the world has a problem. The next step is to accept a higher power. Its not our fault. God did it. The third step is to turn our will over to God. I'm starting to get worried because I don't know what that means.
Anyone else considering making an Atriplex sheep farm in the desert, or am I just wierd?
What we really need is more research into GM crops which the environmentalists hate for some reason.
I'll try to field this one. I'm a moderate on the issue. I don't think GM crops are themselves a bad idea, but I am studying environmental law, and I have pretty good exposure to what people in the movement worry about.
You can summarize the problem with GM crops into a few distinct worries:
1) A love of "natural" foods.
2) Worries about crop contamination.
3) What GM technology is *actually* being used for. (Instead of the "feel good" science.)
4) Safety issues in the creation of GM crops.
First, a lot of people worry about "frankenfoods." They don't want "unnatural" crops because they're worried about the safety of these crops. As my use of quotation marks suggests, I'm not a big supporter of this viewpoint, but a lot of customer do feel that way which is one reason why organic food certifications don't allow GM crops. I won't defend this view because it's not my own, and I haven't gotten a good solid explanation of it.
But it brings us to point 2. Pollen from GM crops is a HUGE problem for organic farmers. Planting GM crops freely in an area can destroy the market for organic crops at home as well as for selling to Europe and other parts of the world where GM crops are disdained by customers. You simply cannot protect your crop against contamination in many cases. (Also, besides market concerns, there's the infamous Canadian patents case, Monsanto v. Schmeiser .)
The third point is one that really cheeses of a lot of environmentalists. You hear a lot of awesome things in the news about how scientists have invented rice with extra vitamin A or tomatoes with longer shelf life. The truth is that there are really only two major types of changes which companies have fought to get onto the market -- crops that come with their own built-in Bt insecticide and crops that let you liberally sprinkle around the herbicide RoundUp. (A notable exception to this would be GM papaya engineered to resist the papaya ringspot virus which saved the Hawaiian conventional papaya industry while wiping out the organic industry there.)
Personally, I would have no problem with eating crops modified to be more healthy, but both of the above practices do nothing but help prolong the survival of crop monocultures. A lot of farming pest problems exist largely because farmers fight tooth and nail to plant the same plant over and over again, providing excellent feeding grounds for pests and opportunistic species. The use of Bt has taken a surprisingly long time to create resistance pests, but hey, so it begins. Oh, and RoundUp resistance is starting to become increasingly common, meaning that farmers are going to start turning to more toxic chemicals.
It's like disease resistance and the use of antibiotics in farm animals, another tragedy of the commons situation. People realized that if you give cattle antibiotics, they grow larger, so farmers started pumping cattle full of a variety of antibiotics. One by one, bacteria have become resistant in the animals themselves, through plasmid swapping in the soil and environment, and through exposure throughout the environment thanks to runoff of cattle urine and wastes into streams. So, they keep trying new chemicals as the old ones cease to work (or in the case of tetracycline resistance endanger human health).
So, as insecticides & pesticides become useless, farmers will turn to increasingly more hostile and dangerous chemicals to farm. ...Which they wouldn't need so much if practiced more sustainable agriculture methodology. But the USDA subsidizes the current monoculture-friendly, heavy petroleum byproducts using methods, so as game theory suggests, no one wants to change.
Anyway, the la
Parent is informative.
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Zimbabwe, physically, is actually one of the best places to grow corn in Africa. They were once a breadbasket of the region.
Of course now, the entire economy has completely collapsed, so much of the country is starving.
That aside, it's a decent place to grow some corn.
The idea that the sun is the dominant factor in global warming has been resoundingly debunked.
And the idea that warming has increased carbon dioxide (and that somehow carbon dioxide is just an innocent bystander in the whole affair) is frankly facile. Carbon dioxide is the dominant cause of global warming (with methane coming in second). Global warming is increasing the release of some natural carbon dioxide sources. However, these natural releases are DWARFED by industrial releases, a fact commonly ignored by "global warming causes increased CO2" reality deniers. It's a theory that only holds up if you completely toss large amounts of data out the window, which frankly isn't uncommon among the "global warming is a myth" crowd.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
And don't forget..those brackish waters are good for growing yummy oysters too!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Giving a personal (out of one's own ass) opinion is not informative.
Why change the damaging farming practices when you can just change the crops?
I found some information on wikipedia about that:
"Salt-tolerant (moderately halophytic) barley and/or sugar beets are commonly used for the extraction of Sodium chloride (common salt) to reclaim fields that were previously flooded by sea water."
Could also be a future food ... although it's PEOPLE!!
I don't know which is worse: your post, with its selective recall of history and clear anti-Arab prejudice, or the fact that someone modded it up.
One can only hope the "insight" they found was with the thought process, not with the facts revealed.
... Because we don't already have enough salt/sodium in our diets...
Don't fall for it, we know the truth...
What? Arabs created the Sahara?
Um...
"The Sahara is currently as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara
Were Arabs destroying the Sahara 13,000 years ago?
A list of scientists opposing global warming is not a personal opinion, it's a hard fact.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
LOL, modded offtopic for pointing out how shit mods are.
You don't scare me mods.
Because that could solve a lot of problems.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
We don't need to scare you, we can just make you silent.
Now sit down and wait for the agents.
Locatated in the upper south east of South Australia my father has been very sucussful in converting once barron salt pans in to usable pasture with Puccinellia. This grass originates from the west coast of Turkey and it is claimed that it is the most salt tolerant of all the commercially available grasses. James has always had an environmental eye in how he approached farming. I have heard him say 'don't fight it, use it' on more than one occasion. Field studies into the use of Puccinellia at his property have shown that the results were spectacular. Puccinellia has now become an intergral part of the farm providing highly productive and useful pasture component.
The beginning of your comment was on track for an insightful mod, then you ended your comments about how to judge propaganda with a link about SICK BABIES. Dear god, think about the children man, did you not see the irony in that?
Actually North Africa was once the Roman Empires major wheat farming area. Most of that is now part of the Sahara. Funny thing is, we are still basically using the same stupid farming business models of ploughing & massive monocultures. Expect most of the current grain fields to end up more like the Saraha soon.
There should not be any list of scientists opposing global warming. A scientist would never be opposed to any interpretation. They might consider the interpretation incorrect, but that is a VERY different thing from being opposed to it.
As an example: I think intelligent design is incorrect, I am opposed to teaching intelligent design as science. I am NOT opposed to intelligent design itself. That would be stupid.
I'm sure you'll accuse me of being pedantic, and nit-picking, but if you do you are missing my point. Linguistic laziness and poor communication skills are the source of all flame wars and I am god damn sick of them. People need to learn how to speak.
This topic interests me in the context of "seasteading" especially. It would be helpful to have a suitable crop for growing in the ocean rather than on platforms on the ocean. Kelp/seaweed would be suitable, if it could be grown in the shallows near a platform in deep water. From what I understand, there was such an experiment, done by dangling a frame below a floating platform. Unfortunately, the vibrations of the cables damaged the plants.
...is there anyone still denying global warming?
Is the point of contention now whether or not pollution by people are to blame? I forget where we are on the issue.
Man made global warming is Junk Science and is as real as Manbearpig.
I've got a better idea. Stop wasting farmland and fresh water growing crops to make ethanol. Use those for growing food. If you want to grow stuff for ethanol, use saltwater and/or aquaculture. There's plenty of saltwater, plenty of space, and it's resources that aren't already in high demand.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
is totally enough time to reveal the full effect GM crops will have on the world.
At least it isn't Soylent Green. ...or is it?
This article lists scientists and former scientists who have stated disagreement with one or more of the principal conclusions of the mainstream scientific opinion on global warming. It should not be interpreted as a list of global warming skeptics.
And even if they were skeptics the list contains less than 50 names, hardly a sizable proportion of climate scientists. And bringing up the dead-horse hockey stick at every opportunity is a straw-man at best.
Most, if not all of us are typing, not speaking. So learning how to speak would not really help.
hmmm...in an "unliveable dessert hellhole" couldn't you just live off of the bounty of dessert?
http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NA/NAAL/agri/pbu/agriPBUmain.php
Definition of scientist? Someone who calls themself a scientist...
"as dry as it was 13,000 years ago" != "as dry as it's been for the last 13,000 years".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Holy crap, you are frighteningly misinformed about a great many things. Firstly, the government in Zimbabwe is in no way socialist. Taking property from one private owner and giving it to another private owner could hardly be called socialist. As for white-hating, well, 1% of the population is white, but they owned 70% of the land. And they got it the old fashioned way, by stealing it.
Your grasp of history is equally ridiculous. Security a problem for 1000 years? What about the colonial era, the Mutapa empire, the Bantu civilization?
The Sahara has not been a forest for tens of thousands of years. It was a grassland, then it dried up, then the ice age hit, then it warmed up and got wetter, then drier. It's been a desert since about 3,000BC. Muslims had advanced and sustainable agriculture far in advance of what Europeans had. They did nothing bad to the Sahara.
Where are you even getting your information from? Everything I'm saying can be easily looked up online, but I can't even find a single source for anything you claim. Are you making it up, or parroting it back from some right wing hate site?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton