The Guardian reports on efforts being made on one of the Netherlands' northernmost islands, Texel (pronounced Tessel), to produce salt tolerant crops. The project is the work of Marc van Rijsselberghe's Salt Farm Texel, which began testing saline crops in 2010 with both field experiments and lab experiments with the help of researchers from VU University Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam - the literal translation of which is "Free [as in liberated] University Amsterdam").
The project beat 560 competitors from 90 countries to win the prestigious USAid grand challenge award for its salt-tolerant potato.
“The world’s water is 89% salinated, 50% of agricultural land is threatened by salt water, and there are millions of people living in salt-contaminated areas. So it’s not hard to see we have a slight problem,” said van Rijsselberghe. “Up until now everyone has been concentrating on how to turn the salt water into fresh water; we are looking at what nature has already provided us with.”
Some of the Texel seed potatoes are already on their way to Pakistan where 4.2 million hectares of land is salt affected and farmers are often forced to use brackish groundwater to water their crops, which reduces yields and the quality of the crops.
According to Dutch team, there is no risk of overdosing on salt when eating crops fed by sea water. The salt is mostly retained in the leaves of the plant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06 2015, @12:01AM
It's an older Guardian article but freesworld probably noticed it because of this recent BBC clip [bbc.co.uk]. It could be a revolutionary agricultural development.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday January 06 2015, @12:02AM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:11AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday January 06 2015, @12:18PM
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:15PM
I chuckled. If I had mod points you'd've had one.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @08:08PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06 2015, @12:24AM
There is a pretty funny story about rms and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution. [fsf.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:07AM
It would seem that if the salt was indeed retained in the leaves, you have a disposal problem.
You can't feed it to animals, plow it under, or even burn it, because you would just be harming the soil or the animals.
In the Netherlands, they could probably mulch it and put it back in the sea. In Pakistan, they will simply ruin their soil.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:36AM
Really?
Sheep [merckmanuals.com] needs salt - about 9 grams/day.
Same (or even more?) for goats [merckmanuals.com] (more tolerant to heat stress, needs salt to retain water)
Same for cattle [feedingandfeedstuffs.info] (PDF warning):
Careful with too much salt (actually too little water) for living pork [pigpalssanctuary.com], but use at your discretion on/with... mmm... baaacon (however, somehow I don't think bacon has too many addicts in Pakistan).
Same goes with chicken [oxfordjournals.org] (PDF)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06 2015, @03:10AM
These folks produce fish and shrimp as cash crops.
Cows, goats, and camels eat mangrove leaves and mangrove seeds are saved for later use as feedstock.
Eritrea Turns Saltwater and Desert Into A Sustainable Ecosystem [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dankalia.com]
It doesn't mention what the humans eat for vegetables, however.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @07:09AM
Goats? Pretty tasty veggie if you ask me.
(grin... and a goaty one, no less)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday January 06 2015, @06:39AM
0.5–0.75 lb (225–350 g) of salt/ewe/mo.
I'm not chasing down all of those, (and I can't understand why you did either). Half a pound of salt a month is what they normally get. They probably already get more than that, because, like the potatoes, they live in a high salt environment.
Now you are proposing to feed them potato stems and leaves which, according to the story, sequester the vast majority of the brine/salt water that the plants were raised on. After concentrating the salt uptake over a couple acres, you feed that to your animals, which were already getting more than enough salt?
Good luck with that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @07:06AM
No, 'cause they'll be dead [wikipedia.org] long before the salt would affect them. However, rice straws from salt tolerant rice may work well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by dtremenak on Tuesday January 06 2015, @07:08AM
I don't think you understand...maybe you don't have experience with herd livestock. Sheep and goats (at least) are normally provided with SUPPLEMENTARY salt at a rate of around half a pound per animal per month. Cows get the same treatment at a somewhat higher rate (close to half a pound per DAY), and horses somewhat less than cows IIRC. Goats and cows usually get salt blocks to lick, but sheep get loose rock salt because they are incredibly stupid and break their teeth on blocks.
If a farmer were to provide his animals with a diet with a higher amount of salt, they'd just consume less supplementary salt...thereby saving him money.
More natural salt in animal feed is not a problem, it's a boon.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday January 06 2015, @10:50PM
walking into the fray here (and likely to be blasted by both sides), but I think that his/her point was that the *water* given to the animals probably contains enough salt in it to meet their dietary needs without the need for supplemental salt at all... although lacking concrete data for the dietary intake of livestock in the region... either of you could be right.
To muddy the waters further, I have no idea if livestock salt supplements (either in block or rock form) are even available in that region anyways...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @07:23AM
In fact, with the potato leaves and stems: you dry them, burn them and discard the ashes (and salt) in a seaweed farm: a supplement of trace elements and CO2 scrubbing from water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06 2015, @03:45AM
Potatoes are nightshades and the leaves are poisonous anyway.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Tuesday January 06 2015, @11:28AM
Then what is in those licking stones that the cows have in summer?
Also, I read parts of Pakistan can get extremely hot (Mohenjo-daro [wikipedia.org] (WARNING images may be NSFW in some countries)) so the animals probably need to replenish more salt than in temperate climates.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday January 06 2015, @04:09PM
Why can't you plow them under? The salt came out of the soil, you're just putting it back. It won't make the soil any more salty.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday January 06 2015, @02:08AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday January 06 2015, @03:03AM
If fields are irrigated with salt water or brackish water and the water is allowed to evaporate due the sun. The ground ought to reach unsustainable levels of salt making it impossible to grow anything at all?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06 2015, @03:49AM
Ideally, the plant should absorb the salt and it should leave when the plants are harvested.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:52PM
Do you like Japanese food?
I like to eat kelp that I find washed up on the beach.
But yes when there is too much salt, nothing but exotic bacteria can live in it, however there is also rain which will wash some of the salt away.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday January 07 2015, @01:45AM
But will the rain wash away *enough* ..? otoh rain is without salt asfaik.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 06 2015, @08:23AM
They grow in beach sand, not right at the waterline back inland a little bit, I expect where there are more nutrients.
They are edible, and taste OK. I've never heard of them being cultivated commercially.
They might not be as economical as regular peas, but one could grow them with salty water.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 06 2015, @08:33AM
I learned about this while studying for the Wilderness Survival Merit Badge:
Dig a hole. Perhaps the dirt has some moisture, otherwise dampen it with water you otherwise could not drink, like saltwater or water that harbors disease.
Put a container such as a cup in the bottom of the hole. Cover it loosely with clear plastic, then weight down the center of the plastic with a rock.
Sunlight will pass through the plastic, leading the water to evaporate. The coolness of the air against the top of the plastic results in condensation, which drips down into the container.
It's not very fast but you really don't need much water just to survive.
A while back I listened to a California Congress Critter - I think it was Nancy Pelosi - speaking on the radio about water desalination. I wrote her a letter to describe this, and suggested it be done on a large scale. There are some places in California that are quite arid on the coast; in Mexico's Baja California, there is desert right on the coast. With some engineering research, I expect one could develop a way that would be cheaper than the commonly-practiced reverse osmosis.
One of the her staff called me on the phone to ask for more details. I explained it to her during our conversation, followed up by a letter with a diagram but never heard anything more about it.
If one could indeed do this more economically than reverse osmosis, there would be a lot of money to be made. I'm not concerned about making the money myself; I'd like someone else to do it. There are many places in the world where one either cannot get clean water, or enough water.
I understand that handpumped water wells are installed all over Bangladesh, so the women and girls would not have to spend all day carrying water. Unfortunately many of the wells are contaminated with arsenic. Not enough to kill them right away, but enough to sicken them over a period of years. Perhaps this kind of solar distillation would be helpful to the Bangladeshis.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday January 06 2015, @10:23AM
A solar still works fine on a small scale - and indeed it could be scaled up - but the problem is that if you do it with salt water, then the salt is left behind in the bottom of your pit when the water evaporates. This leaves you with salty soil that is completely useless for growing crops and is poisonous to the local wildlife. You also risk contaminating the water-table beneath. Of course, if you have salt-resistant crops as per TFA, that's less of a problem: You can water them with brine and (as long as you don't over-water) they will suck up the water and store the salt in their leaves, leaving the soil undamaged. You then have to safely dispose of the salty leaves - you could dump them in the sea, I suppose, but then you risk affecting the local salinity levels in the water and killing off marine life. You also don't get to use the leaves for useful stuff like compost or animal feed (although someone upthread seems to think farm animals would be just fine eating salty leaves - that could be interesting).
Regarding the Bangladeshi wells: I read that in some countries, helpful charity workers installed water pumps so that the village women wouldn't have to walk miles to the river to get water. Result? Women ignored the pumps and went to the river anyway - turns out the women having an excuse to spend time away from the menfolk was an important part of the social structure. Charities are now tending towards things like this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_water_roller [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 06 2015, @12:31PM
Leave it to the wanna be chemical engineer to fix your process plant problems....
Convert it to a continuous process, change from a pit to a slightly sloped trench, move the whole works microscopically above high tide, pump seawater in the high end of the trench away from land very slowly, such that the low end hanging over the ocean drips somewhat concentrated salt brine right back into the ocean. For bonus eco points make the works out of recycled plastic and power the pump with a solar panel, seeing as its not going to do much solar evaporation in the middle of the night when its dark anyway.
Another game you could play if you insist on batch processing is at night you can clean the salt out and rinse the works with excess seawater, it'll never get too much saltier than the ocean.
The process is simple nearby an ocean or river, not so simple for stuff like deep well brine (like in oil fields)
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:54PM
That's why there are so many drying pans around San Francisco Bay. It's not just to make salt but to capture other chemicals, lithium I expect.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 06 2015, @02:13PM
His ex-girlfriend is one of my closest friends. She was upset that he spent so much time away from her, playing golf, so she bought her own clubs and learned to play.
Perhaps you can see where I am going here.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 06 2015, @03:10PM
> Perhaps you can see where I am going here.
No. No I really can't.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 06 2015, @08:10PM
The two friends were a couple - a man and a woman.
The man was always off playing golf, so the woman bought some clubs then learned to play, so she could spend more time with her boyfriend.
However she soon realized that he played golf so he could spend time away from her.
They are no longer together. It's rather awkward for me, actually, as they are both quite close friends of mine, but no longer speak to each other.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Tuesday January 06 2015, @01:56PM
Do you know what goes well with potatoes?
Zeekraal [wikipedia.org]
When I was a boy, we'd love to visit the sea-side at low tide, walk around with the mud sucking on your wellies, and collect this plant for eating (along with periwinkles).
Apparently in English it's called samphire or glasswort. Do you know it? It only grows in salt marshes, i.e. under seawater at high tide, on land at low tide.
I can't easily think of a vegetable more delicious than freshly plucked zeekraal, lightly blanched, with a lump of butter.
(If you're not squeamish, you can collect "kreukels" [wikipedia.org] while you're at it. They're easy to catch because they don't crawl very fast.
Boil them and eat the least-disgusting exemplars with a large sewing needle. Tastes a bit like snot.)