Farmers in hot, arid regions are turning to low-cost solar pumps to irrigate their fields, eliminating the need for expensive fossil fuels and boosting crop production. But by allowing them to pump throughout the day, the new technology is drying up aquifers around the globe.

Solar pumps are spreading rapidly among rural communities in many water-starved regions across India, Africa, and elsewhere. These devices can tap underground water all day long at no charge, without government scrutiny.

For now, they can be great news for farmers, with the potential to transform agriculture and improve food security. The pumps can supply water throughout the daylight hours, extending their croplands into deserts, ending their reliance on unpredictable rains, and sometimes replacing existing costly-to-operate diesel or grid-powered pumps.

But this solar-powered hydrological revolution is emptying already-stressed underground water reserves—also known as groundwaters or aquifers. The very success of solar pumps is “threatening the viability of many aquifers already at risk of running dry,” Soumya Balasubramanya, an economist at the World Bank with extensive experience of water policy, warned in January.

An innovation that initially looked capable of reducing fossil-fuel consumption while also helping farmers prosper is rapidly turning into an environmental time bomb.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
    136·
    10 months ago

    There’s just too many people on this planet.

    Yea sure that was said years ago then farming happened. Then it was said again and thr new world was found. Then it was said again and the harber process was found.

    Yes we will probably make lab grown meat and we can keep increasing our population.

    But look we are farming absoulte marginal, temporary farmland.

    But there is too many people. We make up a huge amount of the biomass on this planet there are just too many people and we are fucked because of it.

    There doesn’t seem to be any solution to it either.

      • Spacehooks@reddthat.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Crazy part is I read Africa’s pop is going to double over next 35 years. Is that even sustainable in that region? North America and eruope are already getting tons of migration because of the current condition living there. Maybe they need more birth controls to reduce the resouce needs.

      • Wanderer@lemm.ee
        16·
        10 months ago

        No it’s about bringing in immigrants to keep wages down and house prices up.

        • eatthecake@lemmy.world
          12·
          10 months ago

          For the economy. It’s all for the economy. Profits must grow. House prices can only go up. GDP is the only metric that matters.

          I can understand why some people just want to burn it all down.

    • imsodin@infosec.pub
      81·
      9 months ago

      Please look at past trends in fertility, and predictions of reputable, independent sources. The growth rate is already sinking fast (just in case: the rate is sinking, population is still growing). With the current/recent situation, in the short term the growth continues, but slows and mid-term there will be a reduction in population. And already today we do have the means to support this population much more sustainably, we just choose not to (we even produce food to turn it into gasoline o.O ): It would require a massive wealth/standards re-distribution, and re-distribution is socialist and thus bad (/s in case that’s necessary). A possible starting point: https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth-over-time

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
      31·
      10 months ago

      About the only solution would be barbarism. A lottery to decide who gets to live and who has to go. And I’m not willing to participate in that. But as things get desperate, there will be those who are.

      • Wanderer@lemm.ee
        2·
        10 months ago

        China’s one child policy worked well for China.

        But there is no way to get a whole world, one child policy.

          • taladar@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            10 months ago

            The problem is that many countries have ageing populations that vote in favour of policies that increase incentives to have more children so there are young people to care for those voting older people in their old age and pay for their pensions.

    • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
      32·
      10 months ago

      We’ve got endless solutions already we could use and even more in the pipelines, things like vertical farming is already huge for many crops and only getting more popular as is intermixed land use - as automation continues to boom we’re only going to see more of these especially as construction becomes more automated.

      A lot of traditionally space hogging land uses are on their way out, factories are far smaller than they used to be for example with much larger output. This trend is certain to increase as mult-tool automation and task based processing gain ubiquity. That’s a lot of room for vertical farming even before we start using autonomous tools to cheaply convert subterranean spaces - water cycling and environmental control reduce the water use to less than one percent of traditional agriculture while removing the need for pesticides.

      Even without that automation will increase yield significantly, very likely also make it easier to the point where we become used to seeing food grown throughout cities and harvested by robots - why waste a south facing wall when you could either grow food on it yourself or rent it to someone for a share of the yield.

      There are endless solutions to the fear you mention. Unfortunately, the greed and selfishness of our current system means we’re fighting for scraps rather than moving forward to improve things for all but people have always been awful and we got this far.