Peruvian farmers harvest water from fog

[Judi Lynn]

Peruvian farmers harvest water from fog



Sami Grover

Sami Grover (@samigrover)
Business / Corporate Responsibility
May 20, 2016

If you live halfway up a mountain in rural Peru, and if you have no access to running water, farming can be a difficult task. In a town called Villa Lourdes, villagers receive deliveries of fresh drinking water three times a week from Lima—and they used to have to schlep a good deal of that water up the hill to irrigate their crops. That's until a different, all together more elegant solution presented itself:

Fog.

Using 'Atrapanieblas'—large nets erected on the hillside—farmers like Maria Teresa Avalos Cucho take advantage of the daily fog to capture condensation, harvesting between 200 and 400 liters a day from each panel—which is then stored in tanks, and gravity-fed to the crops below.

It's efficient. It's resilient. And it's a hell of a lot more economical than paying truck drivers to bring water each day. According to the fabulous Permaculture Magazine, where I found this particular gem of a video, harvesting fog also has particular potential in coastal areas where the alternative is energy-hungry desalination. As we've noted before, fog harvesting also has been utilized in urban areas to bring fresh water to the slums.

More:
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/peruvian-farmers-harvest-water-fog.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29

Environment & Energy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1127101785

[oldandhappy]

1. There are some villages on the Pacific side in Baja who do this