Agriculture with sea water
Gioietta Kuo May 11 2009
Senior Fellow, American Center for International Policy Studies amcips.org
It is commonly believed that salt is bad for agriculture. But people living on the shores of India have had a saline based agricultural system for hundreds of years Intensive research is under way by scientists at NASA in the USA on algae and bacteria, the two most important biofuel technologies of the twenty first century. As a replacement for oil, algae is extremely practical, utilizes cheap and abundant resources like sea water and wasteland and has the potential to reduce global CO2 output tremendously. Unlike corn or sugar ethanol, halophyte(algae that grow in saltwater) algae does not compete with conventional food growing and most important leaves fresh water for drinking.
In china, sea water agriculture projects are under way, producing geneticaly modified corn and rice in salt water marshes. There is no reason why similar techniques could not be used to raise algae in other energy hungry parts of the world. The great Salt Lake of US could conceivably be turned into an algae pond to produce something on the order of $250 billion a year in biofuels.
People are looking at turning wasteland parts of pacific ocean coast of South American into algae ponds. Many deserts are near coasts and these underutilized areas may be used for algae cultivation. Irrigating desert terrain with salt water may seem to constitute an enormous and expensive public works project, but in fact such a project need not be exorbitantly expensive. Solar powered pumps can be used to move water from sea level, or underground aquifers can be used. This could make waste arid regions of Western Australia, Middle East, Eastern Africa growing agriculture areas.
Algae require nitrogen which is a mineral absent in most sea water. Research is being done on mapping of various genetic halophyte algae.
A very important reason for research into algae is that it could be a direct petroleum replacement and is an extremely practical fuel source from the production stand point. The refining process for algae is much simpler and less expensive than the current process for refining oil. Algae are lipids, comprising 30%-60% oil. With a simple olive press you could get a burnable fuel.
We can even use biofuel for aircraft in space. The fact that biofuel may be used for aircraft fueling needs are very important. Kerosene has special properties, it must not freeze at high altitudes, must not be too viscous to flow properly and should be of low bulk energy density so as not shorten the range. At NASA, tests have been done to prove that algae may replace present aircraft fuel, so that there could be a global transition from oil into algae. It would not require an expensive infrastructure like a hydrogen economy.
Halophyte algae, cultivated correctly, could lessen the worlds food and water shortage as well. Some 68% of the world’s fresh water that is now used up in conventional agriculture could instead go to thirsty population rather than irrigating freshwater dependent crops. There exist 10,000 natural 10,000 natural halophyte plant species, and some 250 of these are usable as staple food crops. One can get a great deal more fuel per acre with algae than one can with ethanol crops like corn and you can use halophyte as petrochemicals to make plastics or as a feed stock for animals. Most importantly, algae are renewable and CO2 neutral energy source