American anthropologist Loren Eiseley once stated, “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), about 71 percent of the Earth's surface is water-covered. So one would think this abundance of water equals an abundance of farming, in particular, crop production.
Alas, about 96.5 of all the water is held in the Earth’s oceans which,of course, are saline. And saline water does not mesh well with most crop production.
Until now.
While half of the Earth’s groundwater is available for use by humans, more than half of that groundwater has a salt concentration that impedes crop production. But researchers are working diligently to turn things around.
Leading the pack is The Salt Farm Foundation in the Netherlands, an organization that provides farmers with the means and knowledge of saline agriculture, in an effort to combat salinization and to improve food security with minimal impact on already scarce fresh water supplies. The foundation maintains that 63 million hectares of all irrigated farmland is salt-affected, with the number increasing at a rate of 2,000 hectares per day.
In this issue of New AG International, freelance writer Lindi Botha digs deeps into research that’s being conducted on how growing crops with saline water can be done.
Staying with the irrigation theme, elsewhere in this issue, we report on how researchers at Stanford University (Calif., U.S.) have developed a new tool for designing and managing irrigation for farms. The tool estimates water loss from soils due to evapotranspiration, thus advancing the implementation of smart agriculture. We then expand on the irrigation theme and illustrate a University of Nebraska-Lincoln study that researched the prospects for using sensor-based fertigation management to increase the efficiency and profitability of nitrogen use.
Speaking of fertilizers, in our Leader Profile feature, I chat with Kelvin Feist, director of sales and marketing with Sackett-Waconia, a 125-year-old manufacturer of high-quality fertilizer systems in a wide range of solutions, from production to terminals and warehouses, and retail/wholesale bulk blending plants.
Moving into the biostimulant sector, in this issue we hear from Sara García Figuera, PhD, part of the EBIC Secretariat and the leading consultant to EBIC’s Expert Network on Seaweed. The European Biostimulants Industry Council (EBIC) has been working over recent years to clarify the misconception that seaweed-based plant biostimulants have modes of actions and biostimulant effects arising from their content of plant hormones. Earlier this year, EBIC released a white paper that clarifies the issue, and Sara answers some questions to that effect.
In biocontrol, we feature a story from Virginia Tech: The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management – a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded organization housed at Virginia Tech – is implementing augmentative biocontrol in Nepal and Bangladesh to help manage the spread of fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda. Thus far, the program has successfully trained numerous scientists and technicians across both countries on the process of mass-rearing and releasing FAW’s natural enemies.
In this issue’s Regional Report, new freelancer Adalberto Rossi Agriculture in Colombia plays a very important role in the economic development of the country, since it is the main source of income in rural areas, makes a significant contribution to economic progress, poverty alleviation, food security and sustainable development.
Read all this and more in this issue of New AG International. ●
