Mexico-US border: Drought
I have only two quibbles with Jaqui's commentary. One, flood irrigation is neither outdated not inefficient. In fact it's the preferred system for orchards in such places as California's San Joaquin Valley. And second, much of the capital intensive farming in Mexico is in fact owned and/or operated by American agroindustrial firms, especially in irrigated regions. These American firms often use Mexican cut-outs to hide their actual ownerships. But at least as of eight or nine years ago, more of the large irrigated farms in northern Mexico were actually American than were Mexican".
Mike Sullivan has a solution. "I believe the answer is large ocean desalination plants for Mexican-US areas that need water. You would have to build water pipelines,but you'd have adequate water for farming and improving the quality of life. Castro cut the fresh water off to our base in Guatanamo. The Navy brought down an old ship that had the capability to make fresh water from salt water (most sea-going vessels have this capability). It provided our water needs for the entire base (both sides of the Bay). There were close to 7,000 souls aboard the base. When I was there for 7 months, '67-68, there was no water rationing. There are hundreds of US Navy ships sitting in mothballs on both coasts that in all likely hood will never be used again as warships. These could be put to use to keep from building large desalination plants".
Ronald Hilton - 5/26/02
Tim Brown writes: "Being from Nevada, and having been a Border Research Fellow for eight years while living in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I am not surprised by Jaqui White's commentary. Water is the gold of the desert, and sparks more passion and sometimes more violence in desert regions than almost any other substance, save perhaps money. Low deserts such as Chihuahua and much of Texas and the Southwest have two attractions for farmers. One, contrary to conventional wisdom, they often have excellent agricultural soils and two, precisely because they have so little rain they enjoy more sunlight and therefor longer growing seasons with much higher insolation than most areas. This was not a serious problem as long as agriculture was relatively specialized and non-intensive. But the more farms the more water they need. And since much of northern Mexico and the Southwest are served by the same rivers and aquifers, the flood of internal Mexican migrants from central to northern Mexico and of internal American migrants into the Sun Belt has placed almost unsupportable demands on readily available water sources. When a drought hits, as it inevitably does from time to time, the water deficit skyrockets. Hence today's accusations and counter accusations across the border.
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