Southern Arizona is known for its desert climate, with very hot summers and mild winters. This climate has meant the region has been a hub for agricultural growth for thousands of years despite the fact rainfall has always been relatively low. It’s Arizona’s rivers and aquifers that hold groundwater which have supported the state’s now $23 billion agriculture industry. In terms of revenue generated, Arizona’s top five agricultural products are cattle, calves, lettuce, dairy products, cotton, and hay. In total, farmland makes up about 35% of the state of Arizona. Farming in the desert has been a challenge for Arizona’s modern farmers, who grow water-intensive crops like cotton, alfalfa and corn for cows. It’s estimated that these farms use nearly three-quarters of the available water supply to irrigate their crops.
The Colorado River system, which supplies 36 percent of Arizona’s total water use has experienced extensive drought conditions for the past 19 years. This has resulted in Lake Mead dropping to historically low reservoir levels. More than one-third of Arizona’s water flows up the Colorado River to Lake Mead. This year an intensifying drought and declining reservoir levels across the Western United States has prompted the first-ever water supply cuts to Arizona farmers.
Extensive droughts and dwindling water supplies have wreaked havoc on the once prosperous farms that could endure the arid conditions. Arizona has also become one the fastest growing states in the last decade, as result there has been a demand for tree lined neighborhoods, golf courses and lawns, all of which require vast amounts of water. As we keep consuming the ancient groundwater, without it being replenished, water tables drop and rivers start to dry up.
However over the last 30 years Arizona has been turning this around, in this video we will show you how a low cost innovative water retention system is being used in the desert, turning the dry landscape into a fertile carbon sink stretching over 100,000 acres and we will show you how this system is recharging the aquifers, by improving water retention by at least 28% which has helped to increase biodiversity, turning the desert back into a farmland oasis. Thanks to Valer Clark Austin and Josiah Austin restoring the watershed in the Chiricahua Desert in Arizona and Mexico.
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Curtesy of USGS:
Curtesy of John Kurc:
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The results of restoring a watershed are astonishing!!! 💦🌿 What do you think, do we need more of this?
Find out more about Dr Norman's research for USGC in this video here https://youtu.be/c2tYI7jUdU0
Thought this was a video on how a woman turned desert to farmland? Takes 4 minutes just top get to the story and it's a 7 minute video.
Lisan Al Gaib!
A lot of history and not the actual content
They are also introducing beavers into these areas with terrific results.
Dessert Queen & Midas Touch
In these very hot climates, if you have afternoon shade from compact, upright trees, the crops or grasslands grow better and need less water. With a system of protective afternoon shade, you don't lose much in productivity. I notice here in South Texas on my sandy soil, the grass is lush and green where there is afternoon shade. The people who have removed trees have caused desertification. Unfortunately, growing two or more crops together makes automated harvest difficult. However with rows of tall cedars or junipers, shade is obtained, and there is room for harvesting equipment, and crops can be rotated. We need classes about sustainable practices available in evening classes wherever there is agricultural activity. The fact is that you don't learn about these practices unless you get a 4 year degree or read a lot of books. Farmers and ranchers need classes on evenings and weekends to learn best practices, as they don't have time or money to get a degree. In many agricultural parts of Texas, there are no practical classes on farming in the local junior colleges! This is utterly crazy. The water authorities should sponsor and promote classes with ranchers and farmers using the practices sharing their techniques.
“Rock dams in Mexico take a lot of Manuel labor.” That checks out
So… instead of crying about the almighty global warming and requesting lowing living standards, they employed a common sense approach and smart resource management. Barbaric! Truly antiscientific.
A WHOLE BUNCH OF NOTHING GET TO THE POINT REALLY SUCKS
The corporate food system needs to dismantled (brought to the US in the personage of Earl Butz, Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture) and replaced with non-corporate farms and ranches. Individual farmers will figure out and do what it takes to stop the degradation of their land. Corporations won't. They'll just buy up more land and ruin that too.
You can do anything with time and money
It’s important for AZ to capture as much water as possible to replenish our water tables. Once it hits Lake Powell and Mead it just gets pumped out and sent to LA
But now lake mead may over flow!
the scenery at 4:28, in the Chiricahua mountains, does anyone know more precisely where that is?
Parabéns pelo trabalho que vocês fizeram . 🎉🎉
Thanks a lot for this sustainable success!! I would like to look and understand better. Where exactly is the land? Would you please share geodata?
Great human Father….
Woooww. I just want to grow my own tomatoes. 😂😂😂😂
Natural sequence farming
With beavers? damn was i close at least
Absolutely fascinating! Love this! ❤❤
Terrible misleading video. Who was this made for? Idiots? You conflate desert with grasslands, well watered mountains like the Chiricahua mountains are not deserts. Oaks and pines are not in the desert where it rains under 10 inches a year. Yes, check dams are nice and can help slow run off and improve conditions post unnaturally hot stand replacing fires that are from negative forest management, specifically 120 years of fire exclusion, but that is not desert. Effective live stock grazing can be used to restore native grasslands, but check dams won't do anything for a slop 50 feet above them. Not unless you terrace, and then you've altered the system entirely.
Uh, if you are talking about southern Arizona, why are you opening the video with misleading stock footage from NORTHERN ARIZONA on the Navajo Reservation, specifically Monument Valley, which is completely unrelated to southern Arizona?
Brilliant work. Congratulations and thanks!
Based on data sets from local an the data from India you could turn Phoenix Arizona Megaplex in to a forest.. Which with the deserts east and west and south would aid in Dust for Moister capturing by the Trees etc. Interestingly THE Stoopid highway could be Façaded water reclamation through local Transpiration..
When my parents bought their house they pd more for mineral rights and many years later an company was trying to buy the mineral rights/ property in the neighborhood. Don't know if homeowners can buy mineral rights of their properties now
Thank You🌸💖
How can we find out when there are work projects planned /
I somehow see the price increases as a excuse whereby farmers will lose their land through governmental increases in the prices of various things – from taxes, to fuel prices. inflation, etc. Meanwhile the Ted Turners and Bill Gates of the world are buying up massive amounts of land.
Farmers all over the world are in dire straits, as seen in the protests in The Netherlands, Germany, and even Dabos, very recently. So go ahead and convince me we are not living in an era where the elite feel free to treat the average person with enough disdain to take away their most prized possession, personal property. Unless you own something of worth, your worth will always be decided by another.
It is amazing that people keep working against Nature with failure, and more damage to the soil as a result. Shouldn't farmers be the ones with the knowledge of how to sustain the land? But farmers learn how to use pesticides instead. Israel has managed to turn their deserts into lush, tree-grown land with the help of drip irrigation. Trees are rooted and grown successfully with the Growasis-box, even in deserts and on mountain sides. When trees and bushes grow, they change first the micro climate, and then rain starts falling again.
It would be nice if as a Nation we would tranfer excessive fresh water from one place to another that needs it. In Florida every time there's Hurricanes the state dumps fresh water from our canal system into the Ocean which causes damage. I could imagine the good it would do in places that are desert areas.
By now asia and america should be homestead