India Digs Deeper, but Wells Are Drying Up, and a Farming Crisis Looms

[YankeyMCC]

2nd in the Thirsty Giant series

(snip)
TEJA KA BAS, India — Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a cultivator of cucumber and wheat, has all but given up growing food. No more suffering through drought and the scourge of antelope that would destroy what little would survive on his fields.

Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of what counts here as the most precious of commodities: the water under his land.
(snip)

(snip)
If groundwater can be thought of as a nation’s savings account for dry, desperate drought years, then India, which has more than its share of them, is rapidly exhausting its reserve. That situation is true in a growing number of states.

Indian surveyors have divided the country into 5,723 geographic blocks. More than 1,000 are considered either overexploited, meaning more water is drawn on average than is replenished by rain, or critical, meaning they are dangerously close to it.
(snip)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/world/asia/30water2.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=d2aae862bcec6ce9&hp&ex=1159675200&partner=homepage

[liberal N proud]

1. They don't need to rely on farming in India, they all can just take

jobs as help desk employees for Microsoft and Dell.

[IDemo]

3. Microsoft won't even have to go out of state:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002527219_water29.html

Diminishing water supply threatens E. Washington farmers

By Mark Schoesler

Without water, the Columbia Basin region would look like the sagebrush-covered desert it was before farmers and irrigators transformed it into some of the top-producing farmland in the United States. Thanks to water, 119 crops are grown in the Columbia Basin. In fact, Grant, Franklin and Adams counties are the first-, second- and fifth-largest potato-producing counties in the U.S.

But this region's future is endangered because of its diminishing water supply. Much of the region relies on the vast Odessa sub-area aquifer for its water. But more water is being withdrawn from the aquifer than is being recharged.

Wells in the sub-area are drying up or seeing a significant reduction in output due to the aquifer's dropping water table — as much as 400 feet since the 1960s. In fact, some wells are 2,000 feet deep. Farmers and people in area communities can't afford to continue drilling deeper for water because it's so expensive.

[fasttense]

2. Hmmm, thirsty people make for good employees. n/t

[YankeyMCC]

4. I should have included link to part 1

I posted it yesterday here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=68581&mesg_id=68581