Whiskey is for drinking, water for fighting...
From the Stars and Stripes by Sandra Jontz Water projects hurting Afghan farmers
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KHOST PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Poor placement and management of wells and dams over several years by nongovernmental organizations and military reconstruction teams throughout Khost province have drained water tables, drying out land cultivated by thousands of farmers in the mountains.
As a result, some farmers who grow wheat, corn, rice or fruit didn’t grow enough crops to feed their families. They turned to earning money by logging and goat herding or other means, and bought food at markets.
Quote:
The solution is smaller dams that are easier to maintain and allow melted snow and rainwater to pool in more places and seep into the ground, raising the water table.
The dams, ranging from one to three feet in height, will be easier for villagers to clean and maintain, said Joyce, who before joining the Army worked as a ranch manager in western Oregon.
Watershed management is one of many projects undertaken by the ADT soldiers, who arrived in eastern Afghanistan in March as part of the U.S. military’s effort to stabilize farming, the country’s main source of subsistence and income. Roughly 85 percent of the nation’s inhabitants are farmers.
The state of Indiana has pledged to supply National Guard units for five years to maintain continuity in the effort, officials said. The 1-19th is the first.
By stabilizing the farming industry, and enabling farmers to not only survive but eventually profit, officials hope to give military-age men alternatives to fighting alongside the anti-government forces, which in the province include the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Haqqani network.
The handpicked teams of guardsmen are specialists in agribusiness, including farming, ranching and business practices, and will help Afghans with, among other things, forestry, agronomy, horticulture, range land management and animal husbandry, said Maj. Ron Crane, the educational director. He recently hosted a "train the trainer" session for Afghan extension agents.
The benefits of civilian reachback capabilities...
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Originally Posted by
slapout9
Lock....er down....getttt er done:D
:D
Darcy's law is the start point. Aquifer modeling software can be a bear to use, it can also be a bit black-box, but it's worth the time. Visual Modflow is often considered to be the standard-bearer in this field (I have no financial interests or otherwise in the company). One of the technical reference bibles regarding aquifer modeling is Freeze and Cherry's book Groundwater Aquifer/Groundwater modeling is a graduate course offering in civil engineering programs...and I suspect that petroleum engineers would be able to offer a wealth of information to anyone so interested..
What's happening in our grid square...
Hey Marc,
We will need to catch a beer sometime ;)
As we consider the Stars and Stripes story we might also think about how a groundwater model is built and what it can tell us versus what we think it can tell us. Here are a few things to consider, and of course this is not an all inclusive list:
1. Was the model developed using uniform procedures and methods?
2. How was the above ground survey performed?
- Ground team, LIDAR, IFSAR, etc? Each has pro's and con's and different levels of accuracy and precision which can significantly impact the model.
- Was the same datum used for measurements taken?
3. How were engineering properties/concerns that we need to input into the model gathered?
- When were all of the water surface elevations taken (spring, summer, fall, winter, morning, lunchtime, evening, etc.) and how were they measured?
- Were the wells logged and the resulting data captured?
4. How often is data captured to update the model?
5. Is there a QA/QC process and do all involved understand it and buy in?
Most importantly we need to ask if all ISAF personnel are consistently coaching Afghans how to catch that particular fish.
Gretchen Peters speaks in London
If interested Gretchen Peters is speaking at The Frontline Club, London evening 3rd November 2009. For details see: http://frontlineclub.com/events/2009...spectives.html and costs ten UK pounds if booked early.
davidbfpo
Soviet -v- Western aid compared
Found via a Canadian e-list of think tank products; Paul Robinson compares the two different approaches, not just in agriculture and makes some key points: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/aug/01/00030/
davidbfpo
Ag surge is coming to the south
Ag surge is coming. Don't worry.
USDA is supposed to have up to 64 people in Afghanistan. I'm comfortable right now traveling with our USDA rep going around on the ground and doing assessments and actual extension classes if needed.
My only issue is why is there 11 agri-business development teams (ADTs)going to RC(E) and only 1 going to RC(S)?
That doesn't really make too much sense to me...
Kind of like COMISAF's "Spend 95% of the time with 95% of the population"
It sounds really good...but do we even have the logistical capacity to do so?
How long does it take to build a company sized combat outpost? Some experts tell me 4 months to do it properly...some people say 2 weeks just to get "something" up. I haven't heard a standardized answer yet.
Yet we are expanding Kandahar Airfield even more and more, why not relocate those assets for COP construction?...kick all the people out of the big FOBs so they can know what "real Afghanistan" is like. "Real Afghanistan" isn't an Iced cappucino at the French Deli...although I do enjoy it once in a while
Why not give us more engineering assets in RC(S) beyond the 30th NCR and USACE?
Water is a complex and sensitive issue in southern Afghanistan
During my year at the Kandahar PRT, the PRT Commander declined to approve several water projects proposed by the PRT CIMIC (Civil Affairs) Section. He pointed out that the PRT did not have hydrology experts to determine the ecological consequences of these projects, nor did we have an sufficiently adequate understanding of the demographic layout of the relevant watersheds that would allow us to determine potential conflicts between clans, villages, etc. that could be caused by changes to the current water situation.
Water is one of the most vital issues in southern Afghanistan and one that provides big potential payoffs if the coalition can help the Afghan Government improve it, but both hydrology experts and ethnic anthropology experts need to provide advice before starting a project that affects current water arrangements.
Sensitive issue the world over...
From the 22nd of October edition of The Economist: California's water wars:
Of farms, folks and fish
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IN 2007 Oliver Wanger, a federal judge in California, ordered the huge pumping stations of the
Sacramento Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas, to reduce by a third the water they delivered to two aqueducts that run south to the farms of the
San Joaquin Valley and onward to the vast conurbations of southern California. His reason was the delta smelt, a translucent fish less than eight centimetres (three inches) long that lives only in the delta and is considered endangered under federal law. The pumping plants were sucking in the fish and grinding them up. The next year, a “biological opinion” by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service reinforced Judge Wanger’s order. Pumping from the delta remains restricted.
The consequences of these restrictions, which coincided with a drought that is now in its third year, reach far beyond one small population of fish. About two-thirds of Californians get at least some of their water from the delta, so with the stroke of a judicial pen the entire state, the world’s eighth-largest economy and America’s “fruit basket”, entered an economic and political crisis.
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The pumping restrictions were a huge victory for environmentalists, who fill the ranks of one of the three armies in California’s perennial water wars. With increasing success since the 1970s, greens have argued that the delta in particular, and California’s dammed rivers and wetlands in general, are on the verge of ecological collapse and must be saved.
For the other two armies, the restrictions amounted to a stinging defeat. One army consists of urban consumers in the dry south, represented by the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies water to about 19m people, over half the state’s population, and gets 30% of its supply from one of the two delta aqueducts. The authority has had to pay farmers in the Central Valley to give up their allocations and let their fields lie fallow, says Jeffrey Kightlinger, its boss. This year it also had to impose mandatory conservation measures.
The pain has been far worse, however, for the third force: agriculture. The farmers and farm workers who have been hardest hit live in the western San Joaquin Valley, which is supplied by the Westlands Water District, America’s largest irrigation authority. Westlands has contracts to draw water from the other (federally financed) aqueduct. Tom Birmingham, its boss, says that, because of the drought and the pumping restrictions, it is receiving only 10% of its entitlement this year.