Rain is still for free

The excessive water consumption, along with the excessive waste of water in agricultural activities are a fact, and a well-known and long-kept debate. One of the most practical and simple measures that can be taken, at least at first sight, came from the rainwater harvesting. The vertical and horizontal rainwater tanks, built from different materials, UV stable polyethylene for example, are able to store more than 30000 litres of free rainwater and may represent a very efficient alternative for small -medium scale agriculture; allowing a more distributed control of the water management. I am not an expert on this topic, but from just a logic point of view I am wondering why are not their use wider extended. Which are their limitations? Should the governments promote their utilization by subsidizing them?

http://www.gdrc.org/uem/water/rainwater/introduction.html

http://www.rainfoundation.org/projects/#projects

http://water.state.co.us/DWRIPub/Documents/DWR_RainwaterFlyer.pdf

1 Answer

1. Dear Gema you are so right rain is still free and still we are not tapping the source. Rain water harvesting must be the national agenda for all the nations. We have a farm pond and as we cannot afford to have a high end poly covers, we used simple black colored polythene at a bottom and we can harvest water and use it for the vegetable grow. Farm pond are easy to construct and give a good return value..no water logging happen if properly built.

   1 Comment

   1. Thanks a lot for your comment Mandisa, telling us your experience and showing that ponds, tanks or any other type of harvesting techniques can be a very suitable way of collecting and management the water. However, I still think that you should receive some support from the government, technological support or/and economic support. Additionally the knowledge transfer between people involved and interested is essential. This kind of process should be a more known and extended! Thanks again!