Subject: Re: Drylands Permaculture
From: [email-masked] (LodiCraig)
Date: 12 Aug 1994 02:04:01 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
(Dave) writes:

>> >I have a longterm plan of ending up in a particularly arid area of the
>> world
>> >(largely because land is so darn cheap!) and would like to go into
this 
>> >armed with the appropriate strategies to create a sustainable
environment
>> for
>> >myself and my family. 
>> 
>> And now you recognize why the land is so cheap.
>> 

>So what do you do to address this?

Make sure you have a reasonable supply of reasonably priced water of
suitable quality.   As another post indicated, you may be able to take
measures to work around the shortage of water, but you may end up trading
dollars. 

 Water issues in arid areas are subject to a lot of scamming ... so be
very careful before you purchase.  

Also ... when an arid area imports water to meet their local needs, they
often dry up other regions causing problems for both farmers and
fisheries.  Water politics in the south and west are some of the dirtiest
politics around.  L.A. is trying to do to northern California what they
did to the Owens Valley and Mono Lake ... and they are slowly succeeding. 
They even get laws passed in the name of protecting the enviornment so
they can suck more water south at their inlet.

Please forgive my soapboxing, its a sensitive issue around here.

Craig, a farmer in California
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