If any one place deserves to be called the birthplace of modern irrigation, that place is the Punjab, a sandy triangle of pancake-flat alluvium where India’s British rulers built the first of their 46 “canal colonies” in 1849. The first colony consisted of only a
SHEPPARTON, Victoria, Australia–When spring came to the Riverine Plain of northern Victoria in September 1989, Peter Avram’s peach orchard slowly awakened and burst into leaf, just as it always had before. Peter Avram, a peach grower in Victoria, examines trees killed by rising groundwater at
Gary Zahm remembers it as just a feeling, a vague impression that something was wrong at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, which he had just been put in charge of. Mostly, it was the smell. “I’ve worked in alkaline marshes all my career,” Zahm said.
LOST HILLS, Calif.–On a recent May afternoon when the temperature was toying with triple digits, Dr. Joseph Skorupa, a federal wildlife biologist looking for bird eggs, walked a low earthen levee between two vast pools of shallow water. With light-colored clothing and a broad-brimmed hat,
Lou Thiel, 46, a college graduate and second generation potato farmer from Idaho Falls, Idaho, believes that “farming is a poor business but a great way of life.” Thiel is worried about skyrocketing costs–a piece of equipment bought for $2,600 eight years ago cost $13,200
