Agricultural Water Problems and Solutions – What You Need To Know

By Mark W. Boutwell

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Water is the most important compound, making up between 50% and 65% of our body mass. It also comprises 70% of the entire Earth. Though water is the most abundant resource on planet Earth, only about 1% of water is considered safe for immediate human consumption.

Today, our society is facing a huge agricultural water problem. Water quality is rapidly decreasing as a result of human activities such as deforestation, mining and dumping of chemicals waste generated by factories into water sources such as oceans, rivers and lakes. In this article, we explore the actual agricultural problem we’re facing today, its causes and how this problem can be solved.

Defining the Agricultural Water Problem

Water is increasingly becoming scarce and the failure to use freshwater appropriately poses serious risks to sustainable development. Despite its limited supply, there is a widespread tendency to misuse water. Of great concern is people’s failure to appreciate the fact that water supply is finite and competition for limited water resources between industrialization, urbanization and agriculture has already started constraining development in most countries.

The World Wild Fund (WWF) statistical estimates show that out of the 2,500 trillion liters of water used in agriculture each year, about 1,500 trillion liters go to waste. In major basins, the quality of surface water is deteriorating rapidly as a result of chemical usage in soils in the form of fertilizer and exposure to other industrial and urban waste. In addition, groundwater gets polluted as a result of contaminated surface water seeping into the ground. Aquifers are increasingly losing their ability to hold water due to over-exploitation and reduction of forested land to facilitate recharging of ground water.

Causes of Agricultural Water Problem

Poor Planning on Water Usage

In many cases, commercial farmers use unsustainable agricultural practices that do not involve allocation of water for various uses. This leads to wastage of huge amounts of water on a daily basis. Though in any country irrigation projects are meant to be heavily subsidized economic projects, the failure to recognize that water is increasingly scarce and the most valuable resource hampers efforts to effectively plan for usage of available resources to generate maximum outputs. This is of great concern considering the fact that the source of water is limited.

Chemical Usage and Poor Waste Management

The main source of water pollution is commercial farming. This is mainly as a result of storage and disposal of animal waste and manure leaking into water bodies such as rivers. Other than that, manure is sprayed onto fields and agricultural farms as a fertilizer but the soil can only absorb a certain amount. Once the limit is reached, the remnants of the manure will seep into the water systems, polluting them.

In addition, the widespread use of toxic pesticides in non-organic farming adds considerably to the contamination of soil and water. Notably, Monsanto’s Roundup, an integral part of GMO agriculture, has become a disturbingly common contaminant in our air, water, rain,soil and food supplies.

Competition for Water Resources

Competition between agriculture, industries and cities for limited water supplies is already constraining development efforts in many countries and limiting the availability of drinking and agricultural water supplies. As populations and economies expand in growth, competition for limited water resources tends to intensify leading to conflicts among water users. As a result, farmers in drought-striken California, for example, are turning to tainted oil-industry wastewater for crop irrigation.

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