Guest essay by Eric Worrall
For centuries, Bangladeshis have planted vegetables on floating hyacinth beds to secure food supplies against flooding. According to a new study, we could all learn from their experiences.
Floating gardens as a means of maintaining agriculture despite climate change
According to a new study, Bangladesh’s floating gardens, built to grow food during the flood season, could provide a sustainable solution for parts of the world affected by flooding due to climate change.
The study, recently published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food and Environment, suggests that floating gardens could not only help reduce food insecurity, but could also bring income to rural households in flood-prone parts of Bangladesh.
“We’re focusing here on adaptive change for people who are victims of climate change but who did not cause climate change,” said Craig Jenkins, co-author of the study and professor emeritus of sociology at Ohio State University. “There is no confusion: Bangladesh did not cause the carbon problem and yet it is already experiencing the effects of climate change.”
Bangladesh’s floating gardens began hundreds of years ago. The gardens are made up of native plants that swim in the rivers – traditionally water hyacinths – and function almost like rafts that rise and fall with the water. In the past, they were used to keep growing food during the rainy season when rivers filled with water.
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Read more: https://www.miragenews.com/floating-gardens-as-a-way-to-keep-farming-537853/
The abstract of the study;
Floating Gardening on the Bangladesh Coast: Evidence of Sustainable Agriculture for Food Security in Climate Change
LM Pyka, A. Al-Maruf, M. Shamsuzzoha, JC Jenkins, B. Braun
Around a quarter of Bangladesh is flooded several months a year, which has a particular impact on agriculture. This has far-reaching consequences for the lives of the rural population. During the monsoon season in particular, many people in water-rich areas suffer from food shortages and nutrient deficiencies, mainly due to crop failures and lower incomes. By using floating gardens, smallholders can take advantage of flooded areas that would otherwise not be manageable for months. Because of the growing population pressures and the possible effects of climate change in BangladeshThe available agricultural land can decrease, which makes such innovative cultivation methods more important. The coastal people of Bangladesh have practiced this cultivation method to grow vegetables and saplings on floating beds, thus securing food production and the income of farmers with adverse climate shocks. The main purpose of this study is to examine the general methods of swimming gardening and their contribution to food security at the household level. The results of the study are based on nine qualitative interviews with local farmers and key informant interviews (KII). The study shows that floating gardening is a sustainable cultivation method and income strategy for rural households in flood-prone coastal regions of Bangladesh. Floating gardens contribute to food security by ingesting vegetables with nutrients. Areas that cannot be cultivated are made usable, and the achievable income ensures the safety and diversity of the food in the season of the floating gardens.
Read more: https://journal.safebd.org/index.php/jafe/article/view/51/49
The BBC has an excellent article with pictures describing this remarkable innovation.
The study mentions the “possible” effects of climate change rather than the certainty. Given this centuries-old practice, it can hardly be said that anthropogenic climate change was the reason farmers began creating floating gardens.
Do many other people have to copy this innovation? I doubt that climatic floods, even if they occur, will play a major role in advanced countries – advanced countries have the technical capabilities to build better flood management systems. NSW, Australia, which was hit by severe flooding a few weeks ago, has raised the dam walls by up to 17 m to improve flood protection. If 17 m is not enough, the walls are raised again.
With the world’s population growing so fast that there is a lack of farmland, some of the wilder floating city ideas might emerge, but we are far from running out of farmland. There are huge deserts and ice fields that could be turned on with a little tech if it made economic sense.
If we can figure out how to build affordable nuclear fusion facilities, subsea farming may make more sense than floating farms. Underwater provides good access to dissolved CO2 and fusion fuel, complete isolation from land-based agricultural pests and parasites, complete protection from the elements, and an ocean of water as a heat sink to dispose of the waste heat from the grow lights and the fusion reactor.
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