Regreening the desert with John D. Liu | VPRO Documentary | 2012

The obsession I'm mentioning is based one's worldview & presuppositions...How we reify & approach the problems determine the solutions. Appeal to authority will ensure policies that enrich the authority, with the associated conflicts of interest, confirmation bias, & transfer of power from the population to the authority. Remember, that plant growth is promoted with Carbon Dioxide. A principle of Permaculture is turning the problem into the solution. Elevated CO2 is plant food, if we properly take advantage of the opportunity. Here's an anology re: agriculture. Conventional monoculture petro-chemical till agriculture optimizes for yield & only yield. Unfortunately, there are pests, molds, blight, disease, weather issues, drought, soil conditions that reduce yield. In response, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, mass irrigation (disrupting watersheds), petro-chemical fertilizers are all sold to the farmer. This leads to soil erosion, destruction of ecosystems, pollution, & lower quality (less nutrition) food. Instead, one can practice regenerative agriculture, that optimizes the ecosystem & soil remediation. Earthworks, such as swales, terraces, & ponds are used to capture rainfall & cycle the water through the property for as long as possible. Polycultures of plants that compliment each other are planted together. Animals are allowed to graze, which brings in fertilizer. Predatory insects & birds are introduced into the habitat to control pests & molds. And you get a higher overal

Soil erosion is a reversible process but it will require a little effort and planning. When it works it's an investment that actually pays off. Here's a nice example of the Chinese restoring some soil: [LINK] I've seen a documentary with some before and after video footage. Quite amazing difference: [VIDEO] Planned grazing is another approach that has seen some success: [LINK]

Modern mechanized agriculture is incredibly efficient and productive, but it degrades soil health over time and loses topsoil. There are methods that increase soil and fertility over time (Permaculture, Syntropic farming, regenerative agriculture) but they are typically relatively labor intensive. China and India have made great strides in recent times. India's Water Revolution #2: The Biggest Permaculture Project on Earth! with the Paani Foundation [LINK] India's Water Revolution #3: From Poverty to Permaculture with DRCSC [LINK] Regreening the desert with John D. Liu [VIDEO] > It all started in 1995 when Liu filmed the Loess-plateau in China. He witnessed a local population who turned an area of almost the same size as The Netherlands from a dry, exhausted wasteland into one green oasis. This experience changed his life. To me it seems that the two main areas to focus on to make a real contribution are: 1) Make modern agriculture ecologically harmonious. 2) Make ecologically harmonious agriculture more automated. Obviously these converge. (My feeling is that we would be happier with lots of little farms rather than a few large ones, but I'm not interested in debating that particular point. I care about ecological harmony. Future generations can work out the economic forms provided we don't crash the system before then.)

> As global warming progresses, a lot of the seeds that we are used to being able to grow aren't going to grow anymore, and the land that we used to grow them on will be turning into a desert. We can find or develop new drought- and heat-tolerant varieties, like the tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius)[1]. More importantly, we can alter the climate directly though our patterns of agriculture and horticulture.[2][3] > Within 50 years there's going to be mass migrations and tremendous demand for the land that is still viable for growing crops. FWIW, there's a very interesting talk about that[4] and one of the take-aways is that we may well see e.g. Bangladesh unilaterally pursuing geoengineering solutions, not waiting for international consensus. > GMO definitely isn't the only solution, and it may not even be the best one but it is one field that we need to deeply investigate and try out if we want our species to survive with a similar standard of living to what we enjoy today. I'm not actually against genetic engineering, I just think we should wait a few hundred years, until we have a better idea of how life works -OR- some extra-terrestrial biospheres in which to experiment without risking Earth at all. In the meantime, I believe we already have all the biological diversity we need to tackle the coming challenges already, we just have to recognize and use it. In any event, the OP is BS propaganda, not science, eh? [1] "Phaseolus acutifolius, or the Tepary bean, is a legume n

Probably the best documented example of it working is in the Loess Plateau in China. John D Liu has a couple documentaries on it, here is one: [VIDEO] A good example of a similar project in India, as covered by Andrew Millison: [LINK] Sepp Holzer did a similar project in Portugal: [LINK] ...I believe he also did some pretty large projects in the middle east, but I can't find any vids on them at the moment. Geoff Lawton has done a ton of projects like this, but maybe not at the landscape wide scales like the projects above. Probably the best book on the basic principles of how to do it - Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. Also the book Water For Every Farm by P.A. Yeomans is pretty good as well, but not as accessible of a read. TLDR - To keep desert monsoons from flooding areas downstream, dig a landscape wide network of swales and basins to catch, soak and sink the water into the soil. Properly dug, such earthworks recharge aquifers while stopping flooding and erosion.

John D Liu made a documentary which covers Jordan's efforts among others titled "Regreening the Desert". [VIDEO]