Farming in a water crisis

No AI was used to write or edit this post – we are reclaiming creativity and water together.

We are farming in extreme times. Barely a drop of rain in 2 months and less than 3% of the average Summer rainfall, with the water table at record low levels whilst springs and aquifers are drying up. Bans and restrictions on water use whilst the government approves new data centres (which are quickly becoming the main use of water in the western world), and gives the ‘green’ light to new oil and gas extraction, demonstrating the opposite of global leadership whilst eroding our generations chances of a liveable planet.

As I write, there are wildfires down the road in Wiltshire and the cracked yellow ground of fields around us indicate that we’re not far off. Whilst I run around with sprinklers on a drought stricken farm, selecting which thousands of plant lives to save and which thousands I have to let go, I am reminded of being on the streets 10 years ago as a teenager protesting about the governments lack of climate action, and demanding that the crisis be taken seriously, as it’s our futures on the line. Now it is our present moment on the line, we’re battling the sins of our ‘elders’ & politicians on the front line, and we’re beyond the point of no return, tipping points already in motion. But like with the plants, this does not mean we give up and stop irrigating and just say its too late – we need to get water to where its needed to save what we can, whilst also developing the deep adaptation and systems of resilience. This includes cultivating inner resilience and deep adaptation of our mindsets, stepping into our active gifts in service to life rather than procrastinating, ignoring or simply complaining. Thankfully, tipping points are non-linear and operate in both directions, in destructive cycles and regenerative spirals. When people truly activate and come together, and build a new world with ancient values and river consciousness, the impossible becomes possible, and I’ve witnessed this in countless examples, projects and communities across the world and in our bioregion.

Water resilient farming is at the core of this work. farmers are some of the hardest hit by climate change and yet the best placed to lead on the solutions. There are many frontiers of climate change, and as farmers reliant on the land for our livelihoods, cultures and meaning, we fight on the front lines of the climate and water crisis every day in these extreme times. This is not sustainable and needs massively scaled levels of support, funding and understanding, which is only happening in small pockets currently, largely driven by pioneering regenerative farmers and communities of place that are backing their land stewards. We are incredibly grateful for this in our community, and whilst there is much more work to develop true regional resilience, we have made steps that are worth sharing, multiplying and scaling.

We have completed a circular water design on our farm, following our permaculture design process, we dug a series of natural clay lined ponds and water storage features on our farm utilising the springs and water flows we found through water surveys, neighbours indigenous knowledge, dowsing (from Jason the water wizard) and a year of land listening. These natural watercourses previously flooded the lane and eventually ran off into the river Avon with accumulated pollution. Now they slowly spread and store through our micro landscape, and are solar pumped to our abundant veg fields feeding hundreds of people each week. The solar pump fills giant tanks with spring water which feeds the crops and soil with mineral rich spring water around our 16 acre farm. This is not just about water use, its about the ‘small water cycle’ in our farm and region. By planting more trees (including basketry willow and hazelnut coppices) in our wetlands, and fruit trees (and perennial shrubs and vegetables) in rows amongst our field crops, we create a new ecosystem of abundance, which slows and stores water throughout the farm, and increases evapotranspiration, humidity and soil moisture – recreating a healthy small water cycle which in turn makes up the regional and global water cycles; every farm , garden and landscape is important in this work.

Few people understand the extent of water use in our food system. From Fred Price’s research and book (“When the rivers run dry”): “it takes 25 gallons of water for a portion of rice, 40 gallons for morning toast, 530 gallons for a pork chop, 1320 gallons for a small steak, and a staggering 592 cups of water for a cup of coffee.” These water sources can be from regenerative circular systems, but they are often not, especially imported produce from drought-stricken areas, which rely on water abstraction and have run global rivers dry. Desertification and food systems are inextricably linked, and our westernised diets and food system are at the heart of this. There is another way, an obvious way, of supporting natural water cycles, growing and eating food closer to where its grown and not colonially depleting poorer communities water resources. If the average UK citizen took home their water usage in an average shop at the supermarket they’d need to transport thousands of lorries full of water. As usual, the effects and consequences are hidden for us, but viscerally visible in parts of the world or region where wells are drying up, wars are fought and fields parched.

When someone tells you off for leaving a water tap dribbling whilst tucking into a globally extractive meal and a steak, whilst using AI apps on their phone and wearing a cotton t-shirt (AI/data and cotton are the largest water industries after food production), you may want to gently educate them on the realities of water use.

Two thirds of all water humans use is for agriculture.

This is largely because of the type of agriculture we have designed, profit led commodity crops, mostly annual and arable monoculture fields which hold little water, and wash away sprayed fertilisers into rivers and oceans. Annual agriculture, since its dawn 10,000 years ago in the form of cereals in Mesopotamia, has come to dominate our food system and over 90% of our diets and crops. There are many issues to this, not least the energy to destroy the crop and replant every year with intensive methods and labour, but primarily the water use of these shallow rooted annual monocultures is obscene. Nature designs for abundance, and natural ecosystems contain majority perennial plants (such as shrubs, trees, perennial vegetables, deep rooting crops living for many years), which hold water deep in the stabilised soil, prevent run off, build organic matter each year.

For every 1% increase in organic matter, an additional 25,000-40,000 gallons of water are held per acre (Rothamstead research centre 2019, USDA 2016). From our soil testing with Farm Carbon Toolkit, we have increased soil organic matter on our farm from 7% to 9% whilst growing field scale vegetables in polycultures with agroforestry. In our min-till and composted (from citys waste resources) market garden , organic matter has risen from 7% to 19%, and we are sequestering more carbon than we emit as a farm through our soil and polycultural practices – diversity is king, above and below ground. Apply this to a landscape, alongside circular water design and storage, and we could be living in a water abundant world, with the net effect of each of our meals being a positive, regenerative one for planet and people. A landscape like the Avon bioregion could store and cycle so much water that it would have surpluses to distribute to drought stricken parts of the country or even to Europe, where our insatiable demand for greenhouse grown tomatoes year round has contributed to desertification and plastic covered landscapes in Spain and Portugal.

In river-friendly farming dialogues we often talk of trees and willow as key solutions to slow and store more water in riparian areas - this is true but the potential of soil is thousands of times greater: improving soil management on adjacent fields to waterways has potential to rapidly hold and store water benefiting both flooding and droughts and making thsi water available for plants. A mature willow tree holds 100 gallons of water but take 20 years to grow to this, and in a drought this can also reduce water availability in rich riparian soils, whereas an acre of soil with 3% increased more organic matter can store 10 times this amount (approx 100,000 gallons), and make it available to plants which also increases nutrient availability reducing fertiliser need. We will need all the solutions, tailored to their contexts and led by the land stewards and communities who know their places - in ever deepening relationship, understanding and reciprocity.

We are farming in extreme times, it’s such a tough time for so many farmers and growers, with many going out of business, leaving the fields, losing their farms to data centres, phoney offset schemes or developers. Despite our best efforts and better systems every year, the extremes this year have caused thousands of pounds of crop losses, overtime, coolers breaking, and water system upgrading costs totalling over £20,000. This shifts our small farms context from just about viable to a deficit and a grey forecast for the end of this year; we are seriously considering how we will sustain this work and our jobs going forwards. We have a climate resilience donation pot which has had little uptake but we are grateful to those who have supported. We have an amazing core of customers, community and an epic staff team that do miracles every week, but we struggle to reach out to more people whilst covering our costs. Climate extremes are compounding what was already a tough deal for farmers, we take all the risk for this injustice – when we have a failed crop we pick up the bill , when we have a bumper crop we can just about break even as prices are dictated by subsidised global commodities often from slave labour from water extractive regions, whilst we pay living wage and invest in circular systems at our cost. Farming as a global industry led by corporations has been the most extractive on the planet, for water, carbon, soil loss and deforestation. And yet, farming as livelihood of land stewardship, at the local level rooted in permaculture design and ecological consciousness, has the potential to be the greatest healing force of our time, both for people yearning for real connection, and for a planet yearning for regenerative water, nutrient and carbon cycles.

No AI was used to write or edit this post – we are reclaiming creativity and water together.

AI and data centres are becoming the greatest water extraction industry on the planet, whilst destroying artists, writers and countless other livelihoods. Like all technologies, it is nuanced, there can be a place for it in moderate, considered and essential use only, and like a farm if these were designed with circular water systems and renewable resources the impacts would be hugely minimised. Where AI is used, it must be explicit and justified. A non-AI blog post coming on this soon!

Link to our climate resilience fund is here, to keep our farm alive, well and serving the community in extreme times:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3Ld0loQMZjlfUVLiLf1iGuBajs3_hVNRXOa5KR7MiaIk8mw/viewform?usp=dialog or contact Hamish@middlegroundgrowers.org