groundwater & agriculture

[Guest guest]

These texts seem extremely relevant today with the state of the worlds

eratic weather conditions, flooding, and receeding groundwater tables etc.,

which are caused by mismanagement of the environment. Written in 1930

Shauberger even predicted the flooding that has just happened, as we have

seen on the news recently, in Southern France, where (mass) flooding has

never occured before.....

 

Today in our libraries and archives, we have a vast amount of literature on

water resources management - which bears silent testimony to a cultural

advance that regrettably is only illusory. Until the most elementary

principles concerning all evolutionary processes of vegetation have been

completely understood is it impossible to speak of a real build up of

culture. The development of any culture is directly related to the

understanding of its environment - both water and vegetation.

 

First let us take the Danube whose regulation today has already swallowed up

almost a million hectares of valuable farmland and enormous sums of money,

and will swallow even more - in spite of the fact that navigation is just as

frought as before. To get some idea of the magnitude of this devastation, it

should be pointed out that if the Danube "were given the means by a skillful

hand" to form a natural profile itself, in these areas about 400,000 people

could have found a carefree existence. With a deft flourish of the hand,

enough land would be reclaimed in order to provide Austria's unemployed with

adequate farmland. The same also applies to regulatory works on the Rhine,

and the fertile lowlands of Italy and Southern France, where already

hundreds of thousands of hectares have equally fallen victim to completely

misguided river regulation. In France for example, these must now occur with

increasing intensity (footnote 1). Moreover they will become common further

south until the current misguided practices cease.

 

Through mismanagement of waterways, not only are riverside communities

exposed to a direct and acute threat but, what is far worse, they are alas

threatened by an insideous evil, a reduction in soil productivity. (as

Madhava Gosh prabhu has said recently - no water, no life)

This manifests itself in the retreat of groundwater or its other extreme,

swamp development. If we note the changes that have occured in areas under

food production within the space of a single generation, and if we consider

that today (1930) in Austria hardly any grass grows where once our

grandfathers enjoyed rich farmland, it is clear to us how fast the

productivity of the soil is declining. For example, the areas under wheat

and rye cultivation have fallen from 273 million hectares to 246 million

over the last thirty years.

 

The decline in yield is particularly marked in mountainous regions, which

naturally are the first to feel the full force of the retreat of

groundwater. On alpine pastures, where reviously the raising of 100 head or

so of cattle was of no consequence, today those with grazing rights squabble

over the fodder required for a single beast. The previously almost

inexhaustible, pasturland is today insufficinet even for a fraction of its

former carrying capacity.

 

The reason for this decline in soil fertility is purely and simply that the

groundwater table has subsided and is continuing to sink further. The soil

which ought to produce a good yield, must be replenished constantly with

additional ingredients required by the plants for growth. The carrier and

distributor of these sunstances is the groundwater, which in the internal

cycle constantly brings up fresh nutrient salts from the interior of the

Earth.

 

If the groundwater recedes, then the natural supply of nutrients ceases.

Aftificial fertilization and redoubled effort constitute anly a temporary

substitute for the natural supply of material. Atmospheric precipitation

only moistens the ground and contains no nutrients for the plants.

-- interjection here -- Bhagavad Gita says: All living being subsist on

food grains. Grains are produced from rains...but it would seem this cycle

is not as simple as it might appear. The rain has to enter into the ground

and become enriched with nutrients before it can actually feed the

plants....(rain water is formed from evaporation)

Nature herself is not responsible for the constant increase in the

dessication of the Earth's surface caused by the sinking groundwater table.

Rather since time immemorial, it has been the unconscious hand of humans

that is to blame for the constant lowering of the water table, and with it

the withdrawal of natural nutrients.

 

The reason why water has been generally mistreated is because the importance

of the temperature gradient for the movement of water according to inner law

has been unknown ((forgotten)) until now. In consequence water has generally

been mistreated. In exploiting water's inherent energy for electricity

generation, for example, arbitrary structures have been installed in

channels which in many cases have affected the water destructively. Attempts

have been made to regulate rivers by their banks, naturally producing

negative results. No thought was ever given to the re-establishment by other

means of the rivers equilibrium, which was disturbed by structures in the

river itself and through forest clearing.

The method refered to here - artificial restablishment where necessary of

temperature gradients that under normal circumstances come into existence

naturally. - is the only correct solution to the problem of bringing about

natural drainage of water or its retention in the ground. Only by pursuing

this course or by making use of these findings ((in his book)) can the

further subsidence of groundwater be prevented, and a further drop in soil

fertility avoided. Only in this way will it also be possible to avert the

devastation of floods, and to transform water once more into what it always

was and always must be: the Giver of Life.

 

 

 

footnote 1.

 

The same applies to rivers as to human beings. If they are sick and their

functions impaired, then external intervention and confinement are

insufficient to effect a fundamental cure. Healing and health essentially

lie in the blood of human beings and in the waters of the rivers. These need

to regain their original purity, coolness and energy. They will then be able

to restore health to their environment - the body - the channel and

riverbanks. On the other hand, if we merely patch things up externally, if

we encase these vessels - arteries - in concrete and steel, if we enshroud

the river in a strait-jacket of walls and embankments, then we turn it into

a defiant rebel. It will become our enemy, when all it actually desires to

be, and could be, is our frined. Force, destruction, war between human and

Nature are the unavoidable result - Werner Zimmermann, Tau, page 137.