60% Of India's Irrigation Water Now Comes From Underground - Southern States Will Be First To Go Dry

India, a land of famine until half a century ago, could soon go hungry again for want of water to grow crops. "Some areas of India are going to run out of water, with very severe economic and social consequences," says the chief author of a UN-backed study of water supplies for Asian agriculture, published this week.

Indian farmers now pump 60 per cent of their water from underground reserves beneath their land because irrigation canals are emptying the country's rivers, says Colin Chartres, head of the International Water Management Institute, a non-profit research centre based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

But water tables are falling fast. "The situation is especially bad in southern India. They will run out of water first, because the hard rocks have much less capacity to store the monsoon rains," says Chartres.

Half of all the water pumped from underground worldwide is in south Asia, he says. To keep bellies full, India will have to double the amount of food it produces for a given amount of water.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17620-indias-thirsty-farms-drain-rocks-dry.html

.

But I assume that thought has not occurred to anyone.

:evilgrin:

Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideaway

Tom Phillips in Cuiab
The Guardian, Monday 23 October 2006

Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next door must come fairly low on the list.

Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.

The rumours, as yet unconfirmed but which began with the state-run Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, have triggered an outpouring of conspiracy theories, with speculation rife about what President Bush's supposed interest in the "chaco", a semi-arid lowland in the Paraguay's north, might be.

Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans.

--more--
Guardian

I heard one astute journalist observe that the Bushes want to become "the Saudis of water."

ore of arsenic. There have been terrible cases in Bangladesh with this.

Let's hope that other countries (including our own) take note from
this impending disaster. There again, given the historic record of
the type of people in the driving seats, I doubt it will make much
of a difference.
:shrug: