[LINK] seventh most popular NYTimes article today

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

Jan Whitaker wrote:

> At 01:26 PM 12/11/2006, Craig Sanders wrote:
>
>> similarly, if we stopped growing (and worse, subsidising)
>> water-intensive crops like cotton and rice in desert areas, there
>> wouldn't BE a water shortage. (rice! in the desert!  FFS!)
>
>
> Exactly. In Phoenix, Arizona, which is in the middle of a desert, much 
> of the public understood and didn't put in Eastern US plants. And 
> there was a shift required in the economy there. Would you believe 
> that TWO of the main economic mainstays of the state were Cotton and 
> Citrus? Both were high irrigation users. And the cotton was pretty bad 
> to boot. Citrus was nice, but wasn't a logical crop for the area at all.
>
> The other two Cs were Copper and Cattle, in case you were wondering. 
> At least there wasn't the dreaded R....

It's not even as if you have to say to farmers "get rid of cotton and 
cultivate nothing". Textile hemp needs around 1/5 the water of cotton 
per kg of textile. But you have to first deal with stupid scare 
campaigns based on "this stuff is for hippies" or "we're not growing 
drugs!" or ... etc. My mother remebers during WWII a huge "grow more 
hemp" movement because the navy needed ropes and there wasn't enough 
cotton in Australia to supply uniforms, and other stuff. It was squashed 
afterwards...

RC

>
> Jan
>
>
> Jan Whitaker
> JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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>
> 'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, 
> there is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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