Farming Near Rivers

[ysabetwordsmith]

... will be reduced in China.  They're not completely  stupid. 

This would be a great idea in America too, for several reasons.  It would reduce runoff, improve wildlife habitat, and buffer human areas against flooding.  If we simply designated a boundary area along all the waterways, we would make a huge improvement in water quality, wildlife conservation, and safety.  I would even bet that economic gains from avoiding floods would equal or exceed the loss of crops, since areas immediately adjacent to rivers aren't the most reliable producers due to flooding already.

Comments

[technoshaman]

IDK, depends on what you're producing. Our local CSA has salad green fields in riverbottom land. They seem to do okay. But then, they aren't dumping phosphates all over the place, much less anything remotely toxic... I suspect in 20 years plus of being there they've learnt to deal with it effectively.

The Egyptians used to _rely_ on the Nile flooding to make their rice paddies. The Viet and Chinese to this day rely on the monsoon floods similarly. Both practice somewhat more modern irrigation ducting techniques, but...

The real trick here is not to work *against* nature, but *with* it. Same mistake they're making in Nawlins...

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I should amend that to say, flood-compatible agriculture is okay, but modern Americans seem unwilling to let things alone without dousing them in chemicals. That's not something we want in the waterways.

Now if you're growing cattails and arrowleaf on a reservation ...

Re: Yes ...

[technoshaman]

The CSA I'm talking about, and I'm pretty sure this kind of thing is growing, is strictly organic, so the worst thing they'd be dousing plants in is compost... which isn't any different than what's coming in from upstream.

I hear tell cattail tubers are pretty good....

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

The leaf shoots, green catkins, and pollen are also edible.