Degraded Lands Transformed into Productive Farms: With Science, We Can Create Wonders
By Andy Corbley – Mar 3, 202
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In a degraded and semi-arid farming area in India, simple science-driven changes to the landscape have colored the horizon, and a village’s fortunes, with green.
In the Latur district in the central western state of Maharashtra, 40 years of erratic rainfall, groundwater depletion, soil erosion, and crop failures have impoverished the local people.
In the village of Matephal, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) launched a project in 2023 that aimed at addressing these challenges through integrated landscape management and climate-smart farming practices.
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“This ICRISAT project improved yields, diversified crops, and boosted incomes. It also spared women from walking over a kilometer for drinking water, now available in the village for people and animals,” said Mr. Govind Hinge of Matephal village.
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Pretty amazing results. Went from “dirt poor” with no water to abundant water and good soil.
Unfortunately, the author doesn’t itemize the capital investment that went into creating this miracle. While obviously significant, far beyond what a poor village could afford, one wonders what the ROI would be? For example, the 30 tons of fish harvested might be a source of capital. A 13 foot rise in the water table might be economically exploitable. The extra acreage that become productive might be a source of capital to be used.
I wonder if the world’s engineering schools could be an educational resource? Imagine instead of funding football teams with expansive coaches, Universities could complete for whose intervention produces the most results. Funny? No fill the stadium with two equally sized plots and see which produced the best tomatoes. Yeah, now that is exciting.
Listen to the 4 minute video and see if you’re not as impressed as I am.
Interesting to me is that this intervention made a permanent positive change in peoples’ lives.
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Note: I learned that a hectare (symbol: ha) is a unit of area that is accepted in the International System of Units (SI). It is primarily used to measure land area. One hectare is equal to 10,000 square meters and is equivalent to approximately 2.471 acres.
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