Essay On Arsi Zone

This essay is a review of the article “Growing More Food with Less Water”, written by Sandra Postel. According the article, our global freshwater sources, including underground aquifers and rivers are stressed beyond their ability to provide freshwater. Agriculture redesign is necessary with the two primary goals being to cut water demands of mainstream agriculture and bring low cost irrigation to poor farmers. Typical irrigation, crop furrow flooding is a main cause of wasted and polluted water. This article discusses alternatives to typical irrigation. These alternatives have been tested onsite by farers and surveyed.

The Basin’s water use is for agriculture. Most of the irrigated area is used to grow crops and food. Some crops such as vegetables, fruit and nuts harvest high prices for not much water use, but others crops such as rice yield lower value for high levels of water use.

This report aims to compare and recommend water provision methods for arid region of Egypt. In order to identify what water provision methods are suitable for arid region in Egypt, this report will firstly compare two water provision methods which are desalination and water reuse by considering three requirements in relation to the specific situation of Egypt, which are cost, environmental impacts and public acceptance, finally, this report will recommend water reuse as a water provision method for Egyptian arid region.

(Hasan and Özay 2002, 73-74). As Albiac (2008) reports, development of pipe network distribution and drip irrigation methods in other countries led the farmers to have remarkable irrigation efficiency in drought (143). Such technologies have already been used in China, but they are not widely spread in China’s agriculture. One investigation in China on rice paddy irrigation systems development was performed and it revealed that using the fry-foot paddy irrigation (when no water flooded the field) instead of flooding irrigation (when the rice field is completely flooded) significantly (40-60%) reduces water consumption (Xiaoping, Qiangsheng and Bin 2004, 351). Furthermore, drip irrigation method was applied in arid Northern China and it raised the water usage efficiency (Du et al 2007). However, introduction of new irrigation technologies faced some difficulties in China. As Hodstedt (2010) noticed in his article, the water saved by these technologies such as drip irrigation systems was simply spent on more food production and, therefore, did not reduce the water shortage. Also, as he reported, this caused two other environmental problems. Firstly, the water, which was the supply for underground water and aquifers as it was lost by deep percolation and leakage, became unavailable after the water-saving technologies were introduced and this strengthened the aquifers depleting along with its overpumping. Secondly, after

Introduction: Drought affects our lives in many different ways because water is such an important part of many of the activities we do everyday. We all need water to live including animals and plants. We need water to grow out food that we eat. We also use water for many different things in our lives, like washing dishes, cooking, bathing, and swimming or river rafting, which tells water is very important for us to survive. But now not having enough water for all this activities because of drought, it leaves many bad effects our community

Water scarcity is a problem and will be a larger problem in the future . As the earth warms , regions currently receive an adequate supply of rain . The change

Farmers over-irrigate and under irrigate their produce causing famines and severe soil erosion. As the nation and the world have sunk into a global water crisis, every drop counts. Day by day, the evaporation rate increases. Farmers can’t tell the maximum and minimum amounts of water in their land. That’s where our innovation comes into play.

Climate change is bringing tremendous difficulties to the worldwide economy and to social-economic development. Its effects will excessively influence sub-Saharan African nations, where their economies are highly depending on climate conditions such as rainfed agricultural practices. The Ethiopian agriculture is characterized by extreme dependence on the amount of annual rainfall (Tadesse, 2002). Arsi Zone farmers are facing erratic type of annual rainfall and variability in temporal and spatial distribution. In order to increase the availability of water for agricultural and related activities, implementing RWH technologies in suitable location is crucial.

A major problem for human populations in semi-arid environments is the lack of water for domestic consumption. On average a person needs 200 liters of water (Heller and Padua, 2006) per day to meet their basic needs (food and drink). This volume of water per person is very difficult to be obtained in environments where the average annual rainfall is low, less than 800 mm, a value which characterizes the semi-arid environment (MI, 2005). This difficulty is even more important when considering that the rivers that exist in these environments are not permanent, but go through periods without flow and occurrence of a dry period is greater than probability of 60% (MI, 2005) .

A combination of warm temperatures and a plentiful water supple are necessary in order to combat the negative environmental effects of drought and restore crop production to its normal capacity (Kemper et al., 2012, p. 2). Further explorations into the future availability of groundwater supplies are also critical to maintaining proper soil moisture (Bonsal et al., 2010, p.

When I recorded Tanzania’s weather (specifically that of its capital, Dodoma) for ten weeks, I noticed very little precipitation (less than one inch during the ten weeks). It is true that the country was at that time undergoing its dry season, but the absolute lack of precipitation was surprising to me. The stark contrast between the dry and wet seasons can have severe consequences. If the wet season begins with a sudden, heavy rainfall, there is a large danger of damage to the crops, since “the vegetation cover is often scanty, so that there is little protection against soil erosion when the rains start” (Nieuwolt 241-250). In March of 1973, such a situation occurred and the sudden start to the rainy season washed away an entire season’s worth of crops, to the devastation of the agricultural economy (Nieuwolt). Soil erosion is a prevalent problem in Tanzania, not only to farmers but also to the general populace, who might just find their homes washed away with the first rainfall of the wet season. At this time, little is being done

Among all sectors in Egypt, agriculture consumes the largest budget of available water supplies, with its share exceeding 80% of the total gross demand for water. In case the actual consumption of water is considered (water supply minus the water that is returned to the system), the share of agricultural demands is even higher at more than 95%. The area of cultivated land raised from 5.8 Million fed. in 1980 to about 8.0 Million fed. in 1997. Therefore, the consumptive use of water in agriculture has been steadily increased from an estimated 29.4 BCM/yr. to 38.5 BCM/yr. during the same period (1980-1997). This increase has been made possible by an increase in agricultural drainage water reuse, the abstraction of groundwater and a decrease in the fresh water outflow to the sea. In 1997, the total amount of diverted water for irrigation was 57.8 BCM/yr, (MWRI 2005). In 2010, the total agricultural withdrawal was accounted at 67.0 BCM (about 86% of available water supply), (AusAID 2011). Any water becoming additionally available will primarily be used to irrigate new development areas and not to increase the supply to existing lands. Based on water inflow of 55.5 BCM/year, it is expected that by the year 2017 agricultural lands will cover about 11 million fed., and 63.6 BCM of water will be allocated for agriculture. The total agricultural water consumption in 2017 is estimated at 38.7

This is quite unfortunate for our agriculture that evaporative demand and water requirement for crops in whole southern parts of the country is very high as compare to northern parts and it is very difficult to carry out the agricultural activity in these regions.

Natural phenomenon along with being very beautiful and useful for humankind, sometimes become very disastrous and demolishing for them. They show a negative side of nature and indicate some very demolishing aspects of nature, which the humans cannot ignore because of possessing less power. These incidents remind people that they do not have the control over everything and they are very small in front of such natural calamities. However, with strategic and wise planning one can reduce the severity of its effects but cannot save from them completely. Therefore, the areas that often face droughts should remain alert and stimulate their weather experts to continuously analyze weather conditions and give instructions of

Study area is geographically located between 32° 32´ 38 ' ' - 33° 21´ 09 ' ' E and 30° 51´ 38 ' ' - 31° 14´ 39 ' ' N, in the northwestern of Egypt. The northern Sinai coast is located within the rainy belt of Egypt; while the aridity increases generally to the south (El-Ghazawi, 1989). Rainfall is scarce and varies from place to place and increases in the northeastern direction, ranging from about 30 mm/year in the southwest at Ismailia to about 300 mm/year in the northeast at Rafah. The annual rainfall in northwest Sinai varies between 36 to 54.8 mm/year and the total quantity of rainfall generally increases northward (El-Sheikh, 2008). The area is considered one of the horizontal expansions in the Sinai Peninsula which aims at establishing a link between Nile Delta and North Sinai by El Salam Canal. The ongoing project aims at reclamation of 400.000 feddans (Hafez, 2005 and Mohamed, 2013). Groundwater is the one available source of water in the study area beside support of El-Salam canal, so the assessment of agricultural potentiality in the Northern Sinai area requires water resources evaluation.