WHAT WILL A RULER LEARN FROM OUR TOOL-SET?
If you are responsible for assuring the food security of an Arab/North African/African country, our TOOL-SET will train your strategic thinking when it comes to water:
Is the world running out of water?
Will water one day become as expensive as oil?
Which level of food self-sufficiency do other countries have?
What is the optimum level of self-sufficiency in food?
How to secure food security after oil?
Is desalination a solution to increase food security?
Why so many investments into irrigated farming are failing?
Libya's Great Man Made River: really a revolution?
Our TOOL-SET will guide you step-by-step to quantify food security:
How much water is needed to produce all food of a given population?
How much water is available domestically, and at which cost?
Which products should be produced at home – which imported?
How to quantify the advantage of producing in other countries?
How to compare farming under rain with irrigated farming?
In the end, the reader will be able to easily compare the major options for attaining clearly defined levels of food security:
domestic food production
food imports
producing abroad
raising the efficiency of domestic food production
After reading our TOOL-SET your understanding of the water issue and your options will become crystal clear. You will be able to translate food security, food imports, irrigated farming, rivers and rain, into cubic kilometers of water (km³).
WHAT CAN DEVELOPERS LEARN FROM OUR TOOL-SET?
For a developer and investor contemplating an investment into irrigated farming, sound decision making needs to be based on the full knowledge of the costs of irrigated crop farming and the available alternatives.
You will clearly understand the financial problems many large scale farming ventures in Arab countries / North Africa / Africa are currently facing, and most of all, you will be able to avoid becoming trapped in a failed investment. You will know the answers to:
Can one invest into water?
What is the true potential of Egypt‘s fossil water deposits?
Which is the ground water table depth from which on the energy bill for pumping the water to the surface makes all farming unprofitable?
The promise and limits of desalinated water for irrigated farming.
When it is more economical to farm abroad than doing it at home?
To allow for a sound comparison between the options „produce domestically“ and „produce abroad“, our TOOL-SET describes the cost of "harvesting" 1 km³ of rain-water in countries such as France, Canada, Uruguay, Russia, Ecuador (cost of farmland, mechanisation and farming infrastructure). That number is contrasted with:
the cost of 1 km³ taken from a river (Nile, Euphrates, Tigris and California canal system)
the cost of 1 km³ taken out of groundwater (the cost of water as a function of depth)
the cost of 1 km³ from desalination
the cost of a km³ from exotic sources: e.g. 1 km³ of fresh water imported by ship
the cost and feasibility of 1 km³ of water generated from icebergs off Greenland, and the newer concepts.
Your investment decisions will be based on realistic costs and a sound understanding of alternative options.
WHAT CAN AGRONOMISTS LEARN FROM OUR TOOL-SET?
Planning and managing large-scale farming ventures starts with modeling all costs, yields, inputs into a large spread-sheet.
You will receive a prefigured MS excel spread sheet of an irrigated crop farm, easily adaptable to your own project. This spread sheet lists the yields, revenues, costs (inputs, investments, depreciation) of your operation. It provides a full financial statement, consisting of profit and loss analysis, cash flow analysis and selected indicators.
You will be explained how to use and interpret this Excel spread sheet
You will be able to play different farm management scenarios
When farming and irrigating with groundwater, the cost of water is a linear function of lift (lift = depth + irrigation pressure). For each crop produced under irrigation, there is a specific depth of the water table beyond which farming becomes unprofitable.
You will understand crop-profitability as a function of the depth of the water table and the water distance from source.
You will know the water productivities of alternative crops.
You will be able to identify profitable crops for each water regime.
You will be able to design profitable irrigated farming projects.
Example: Alfalfa and Rhodes grass require approx. 18.000 m³ of irrigation water per hectare and year. For a 10.000 ha farm, this amounts to a yearly total water consumption of 180 mio m³, or 0,18 km³.
In other words, 1 km³ of water allows for the year-round farming of 55.000 hectares of Rhodes grass. The software will allow you to calculate the maximum lift that allows for profitable alfalfa farming.