The Agricultural Groundwater Revolution PDF Download

Author: Mark Giordano
Publisher: CABI
ISBN: 1845931726
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
While addressing the issues of using groundwater in agriculture for irrigation in the developing world, this book discusses the problems associated with the degradation and overexploitation of using it. It explores the practiced and potential methods for its management in the context of agricultural development.

Author: Mark Giordano
Publisher: CABI
ISBN: 1845931734
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
While addressing the issues of using groundwater in agriculture for irrigation in the developing world, this book discusses the problems associated with the degradation and overexploitation of using it. It explores the practiced and potential methods for its management in the context of agricultural development.

Author: Marcus Moench
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9789251049044
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
This study attempts to re-frame the current thinking on groundwater development and the implications for food security. Groundwater is important in agriculture as it provides a reliable fallback when rainfeeding fails. It is therefore instrumental in managing risk and optimizing food production. However accessing groundwater has become habit and turned to dependency. Resources limits on many key aquifers have been exceeded and competition for groundwater has become intense. This study highlights the role of adaptive strategies in dealing with aquifer management and indicates directions of research and management.

Author: Mikael D. Wolfe
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe transforms our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform through an environmental and technological history of water management in the emblematic Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the long Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) engineers’ distribution of water paradoxically undermined land distribution. In so doing, he highlights the intrinsic tension engineers faced between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for development during the contentious modernization of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots, regardless of their access to land. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government’s decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted development policies.

Author: Cesare Dosi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401597812
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Groundwater is endangered and polluted in several ways. Conservation and better management of this invisible resource should be a key ingredient of sustainable water policies. This is especially true in areas, such as many Mediterranean regions, which are already exposed to scarcity problems and which are likely to experience increasing competition between freshwater uses and users. Agriculture is an important user of groundwater not only in terms of abstractions, but also in terms of generation and release of pollutants. Agricultural policies, traditionally directed towards other objectives, are beginning to pay more attention to environmental considerations. However more effective initiatives are required to reduce the pressure upon groundwater resources and to achieve a better integration between agricultural and environmental policies. This book has been developed from three workshops held as part of the EU Concerted Action SAGA, "Sustainable Agricultural Use of Aquifers in Southern Europe: Integration between Agricultural and Water Management Policies" (FAIR5-CT97-3673). The Concerted Action and the workshops brought together researchers working in different but complementary fields, in order to get a picture of the state-of-the art about interlinkages between agriculture and groundwater, as well a critical review of alternative regulatory approaches and policy instruments aimed at improving groundwater management.

Author: Cynthia Barnett
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080700328X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Americans see water as abundant and cheap: we turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what’s now our largest crop—the lawn. Yet most Americans cannot name the river or aquifer that flows to our taps, irrigates our food, and produces our electricity. And most don’t realize these freshwater sources are in deep trouble. Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis—driven not as much by lawn sprinklers as by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more. But the book also offers much reason for hope. Award-winning journalist Cynthia Barnett argues that the best solution is also the simplest and least expensive: a water ethic for America. Just as the green movement helped build awareness about energy and sustainability, so a blue movement will reconnect Americans to their water, helping us value and conserve our most life-giving resource. Avoiding past mistakes, living within our water means, and turning to “local water” as we do local foods are all part of this new, blue revolution. Reporting from across the country and around the globe, Barnett shows how people, businesses, and governments have come together to dramatically reduce water use and reverse the water crisis. Entire metro areas, such as San Antonio, Texas, have halved per capita water use. Singapore’s “closed water loop” recycles every drop. New technologies can slash agricultural irrigation in half: businesses can save a lot of water—and a lot of money—with designs as simple as recycling air-conditioning condensate. The first book to call for a national water ethic, Blue Revolution is also a powerful meditation on water and community in America.

Author: Christopher J. Barrow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317885198
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
First published in 1988. There are many excellent texts on water supply and irrigation engineering, irrigation economics, agricultural development and the problems which often plague such efforts. Few syntheses of such writings have been made, despite a clear need for them from people interested in water resources and agricultural development: students of geography, economics, development studies and agricultural management, administrators, planners and aid agency staff. This book attempts to provide a broad interdisciplinary introduction for such people.

Author: M. Dinesh Kumar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136251480
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This book addresses strategies for food security and sustainable agriculture in developing economies. The book focuses primarily on India, a fast developing economy, whose natural resource base comprising land and water supporting agricultural production is not only under enormous stress, but also complex and not amenable to a uniform strategy. It critically reviews issues which continue to dominate the debate on water management for agricultural and food production. The book examines the validity of the claim that large water resources projects cause serious social and environmental damages using global and national datasets. The authors examine claims that the future of Indian agriculture is in rain-fed farming supported by small water harvesting. They question whether water-abundant eastern India could become the granary of India, through a groundwater revolution with the right policy inputs. In the process, they look at the less researched aspect of the food security challenge, which is land scarcity in eastern India. The book analyzes the physical, economic and social impacts of large-scale adoption of micro irrigation systems, using a farming system approach for north Gujarat. Through an economic valuation of the multiple use benefits from tank systems in western Orissa, it shows how value of water from large public irrigation systems could be enhanced. The book also looks at the reasons for the limited success in bringing about the much needed institutional reforms in canal irrigation for securing higher productivity and equity using case studies of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Finally it addresses how other countries in the developing world, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa could learn from Indian experience.

Author: Aditi Mukherji
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9780415465809
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
One of the key features of agricultural development in the last five decades has been intensive groundwater use in the Indo-Gangetic Basin (Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh) and in the Yellow River Basin (China). Groundwater irrigates almost 60% of the net irrigated area in South Asia and 70% in the north China plains. Groundwater use for agriculture is still increasing. Despite the growing significance of groundwater to agricultural growth, food security and rural livelihoods globally, and at the same time significant signs of limitations and constraints for further use, knowledge of the subject has remained limited. The subject includes the wider issues of socioeconomic impacts, political economy, groundwater institutions, access to other resources like energy and land, approaches to resource governance and management and specifically integrating evidence-based science into management decisions. This book addresses these information shortfalls and provides a consolidated and cross-disciplinary source of information and documentation of realities and challenges of contemporary agricultural groundwater use and management in poverty-prone areas of Asia. It draws on primary data collected in the course of an innovative, cross-coordinated and inter-disciplinary fieldwork programme, covering those regions in Asia that significantly depend on groundwater for agricultural livelihoods. This work is essential reading for hydrogeologists, socio-economists, agro-economists and water managers working in poor countries. Donors and implementers, both government and NGO, will also learn from the experiences described in this book.

Author: Koichi Fujita
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000177432
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book explores and interrogates the food–water–energy nexus, arguably the most crucial factor in sustaining India’s economic development. The book sheds light on different experiences faced in states across India, including the consequences of electricity tariff reforms and related policies on irrigated agriculture. Part 1 focuses on the historical development of agriculture and social change in India, with special reference to the mode of responses and adaptations in social systems against the inherent low and erratic rainfall and resulting water stress in India during the pre-colonial period. Additionally, it investigates how colonial development destroyed social systems and discusses future development prospects. Part 2 discusses contemporary issues of agriculture and social change in India. A comprehensive examination of various important issues related to South Asian agricultural development in the past and in the present, this book will be a valuable reference for researchers of Asian development, sustainable development, environmental policy, South Asian Studies and Development Studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.