Solarpunk Farming

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'Forgotten' water harvesting system transforms 'barren wasteland' into thriving farmland (www.upworthy.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Just a few years ago, the Sahel region at the northern edge of Senegal was a "barren wasteland" where nothing had grown for 40 years. But the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and local villagers teamed up to regreen the area, bringing back agriculture, improving the economy of the people who live there, and preventing the climate migration that desertification ultimately leads to.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago (28 children)

I’ve seen a few posts on this and it’s always exciting to see this mix of cultural wisdom and environmentalism.

But I’m always left wondering why we aren’t supporting these communities with some heavy equipment to do this. From the article it takes a person an entire day to dig one of these moons. Surely some construction equipment could work order(s?) of magnitude faster. I can’t help the hinting feeling that we’re offloading all of the burdens of addressing global climate change onto the communities that are already paying the steepest price.

Is it the climate? How remote the locations are? Challenges with sourcing parts? Hope someone can clarify why heavy equipment would be prohibitive.

[–] L0rdMathias 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't say for certain, but I'll take a stab at an answer that isn't just "to cut costs obviously lmao".

Part of the purpose of these ecological initiatives is to figure out ways to do things at scale without the need for industrial waste/pollution.

Second, it is best practice in most any industry to create and optimize the process by hand BEFORE figuring out how to optimize it with heavy industry. If you begin the design under the handicap of a machine, then your entire design is founded on that crutch. You can always incorporate machinery, but it's often more difficult to remove it from any process once it's been integrated.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I know absolutely nothing about living in the desert but I bet driving heavy equipment on sand (hard-packed or not) is a risky business.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago

Driving heavy equipment on sand is not that risky. We're talking a single digger here, not a 1000t mobile crane.

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