Drought and Growing More with Less

PART 1: This article is the start of a mission-based idea that can serve Austines and Texans and really any other city center with a nonprofit centered around scripture, a community meeting center, and displaying agriculture with a focus on production for others. 5:2F

But first, we must understand the problems we are facing and the reality of population growth, and how it is unfolding for the world and Texas alike.

By 2050, the world population will reach at least 9.8 billion and is projected to exceed 11.2 billion by 2100. Often we are startled when we prepare for such growth and the anticipated numbers far exceed what we planned for, projected, and at a sooner rate. Even with the declining fertility rates across the world, the truth of the matter is that the population expansion of the world is expected to continue in an upward trend due to increased life expectancies in developed and developing countries. These trends are a result of global economics and are very alarming due to the increased demand that it will mandate to sustain the future population.s The production of agricultural systems will necessitate more than a 70% increase in food production over the next 3 decades. If we are to succeed, it will require a complete and radical way we produce food by focusing on the inputs required and the efficiencies of those inputs.?More production with fewer resources than we utilize today while doing it on fewer acres due to lower carbon footprint requirements and urbanization.

Producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and food inequility, using scarce natural resources more efficiently and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades, according to an FAO discussion paper found here.

To feed the future we must understand the past, understand the challenges of today, and look toward practical sustainability of tomorrow. We must address global challenges by taking a community-centered approach. One community we must serve first is today's agricultural producers and the more effective use of water in agricultural systems.

Drought in the Imperial Valley

Across the sun-cooked flatlands of the Imperial Valley, water flows with uncanny abundance. The valley, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, is naturally a desert. Yet canals here are filled with water, lush alfalfa grows from sodden soil and rows of vegetables stretch for miles. The Yuma area, including the Imperial Valley across the California border, produces about 90 percent of all the leafy vegetables grown in the United States from November to March when it's too cold to grow to produce in most of the rest of the country. This natural desert only gets an average of three inches of rain a year -- and lettuce requires a lot more water than that to grow. All of these Imperial Valley farmers get almost all their water from the Colorado River, which currently is facing a record-breaking megadrought and endless withdrawals wring the Colorado River dry, growers in Imperial County east of San Diego will have to cut back on the water they import. The federal government has told seven states to come up with a plan by Jan 31, 2024, to reduce their water supply by 30%, or 4 million acre-feet or 1,303,413,277,255.6?gallons (the equivalent of filling a bathtub twice for 20 million people).

Even with state-of-the-art irrigation systems and more efficient watering methods producing conventional crops in the Imperial Valley urbanization is squeezing the water out of senior water rights for the agricultural producers and lowering yields season after season. The surrounding cities in the seven states utilizing the water will begin taking more water for the population and reducing the amount of effective production on these seasoned conventional systems.

What is the answer? Shift priorities in these areas to water reclamation through restorative agriculture, consolidate agricultural production to CEA production, and localize systems. The half a million acres utilized to produce 90% of America's leafy greens and other cash crops can be turned into sustainability projects and the systems can be reimagined and more localized.

Texas Farmers Will Plant Less in 2023

With summer just around the corner Texas row crop farmers in large swaths of the state are facing a suite of problems related to Mother Nature, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service experts.

While all problems relate to the lack of rainfall over the past two years, concerns are compounding as the summer season begins. Texas row crop farmers in large swaths of the state are facing a suite of problems related to Mother Nature, according to?Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service?experts.

While all problems relate to the lack of rainfall over the past two years, concerns are compounding as the summer season begins.

Dry, scorching, and disastrous conditions meant that many farmers had to abandon the acres they’d planted months before. That often means losing money on that year’s crop.

The 2023 cotton season is already shaping up to be a different story than last year’s, though. It will be much smaller, for one. A recent survey from the National Cotton Council showed that Texas farmers?plan to plant 20% less cotton?than in 2022.

Now this is just for industrial crops that stimulate the economics of Texas in the panhandle and west but the food staples that are produced in the great state. This historic drought has devastated crops from the High Plains to South Texas, a new Texas Department of Agriculture report released early 2023 linked climate change with food insecurity and identified it as a potential threat to the state’s food supply.

The food access study, coordinated by the TDA and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, notes that “climate instability” is strongly associated with soil loss, water quality, droughts, fires, floods, and other environmental disasters.

The report, which was submitted to the Texas Legislature on December 2022 and published in 2023, also points to other factors that are making it harder for Texans to access and afford food, such as wages falling behind rising costs of living and lack of access to food in rural areas. Another issue is organizations being unaware of others with similar goals; for example, the report notes that certain grocers are interested in expanding delivery services into rural markets, while several food banks have acquired trucks to do the same.

Create a Water Reclamation System First and a Farm Second

Sustainability and creating more products with fewer inputs (or inputs from organic circular economics) will be the fourth revolution in agriculture and not the last. A brief recap of the previous three agricultural revolutions.

• The First Agricultural Revolution: From Hunting & Gathering to Settlement.
• The Second Agricultural Revolution: Business, Not Just Subsistence.
• The Third Agricultural Revolution: The Rise of Bioengineering and Technology

Learn more about the vertical farming revolution built into the Third Agricultural Revolution here on Desmond Despommier's #1 show dedicated to the vertical farming and indoor agtech industry! (verticalfarmingpodcast.com).

Pioneering systems in the fourth agricultural revolution will require more advanced CEA technologies and the use of effective circular economics with a focus on renewable energy features. Conventional agriculture today uses 70% of the world's fresh water and love the past 40 years we have lost 30% of the world's arable farmlands due to unsustainable farming practices all while breeding and selecting crop varieties that are not chosen for nutrient density but rather yield, chemical resistance, and transportation vigor. Sustainable agriculture utilizing CEA technology consumes less water and energy, enhances soil composition, and forgoes synthetic chemical input.?Conventional agriculture cannot meet the needs of the current population without compromising the integrity of the environment.?Sustainable agriculture has the potential to sequester carbon, feed the world, and enrich the environment while increasing the efficiency of the agricultural system without compromising the long-term footprint.

Scientists have estimated that a third of the world’s arable land has been lost through?soil erosion?and other types of degradation since 1960 -WWF

Develop a Localized Hub

?As it currently stands, our agricultural system cannot sustainably feed that many people, and divert the water needed to grow it from our large city centers let alone our rural areas. We depend on outskirts producers from different areas to produce the needs of the city. We must invert this model and create food inside city centers for the rising demand and decrease the food mileage to almost zero. Most of the developed worlds live in urban areas. To feed the future, farming needs to get more modular, and dynamic, and support communities from the area in which they are planted.

The global food supply isn't something that is as reliable as we believe and we have seen the climactic and economic shuttering of the supply chain in recent years. To avoid this disruption we must construct infrastructure that allows for community agriculture to be in urbanized areas with systems to support growing suburban areas through mission-based CEA projects. These CEAs will allow for 365-day-a-year harvests of vegetables, and fish (potentially) and be linked to a meeting center or next to ancillary businesses that can create circular economics while providing a localized distribution hub of fresh food. This now leads to the idea of tying a biblical center around the ideas of actually multiplying bread and fish.

Stay tuned for Part II.