Jordan, Wadi Rum

This self-propelled watering carousel restores water drawn deep through geologic layers (98 to 1.300 feet or 30 meters to 400 meters) on 192.7 acres (78 hectares) circular fields, by using a pivoting ramp with watering nozzles. These nozzles are about 1.640 feet (500 meters) long and are mounted on the wheels of a tractor. In Jordan, the volume of water that is consumed exceeds the volume of renewable resources. The underground aquifers are exploited twice as fast as they are filled up, if they are not non-renewable fossil ground water. It takes about 1.000 short tons of water to produce a ton of cereal and so countries in the Middle East faced with growing food demand use modern methods for agriculture that endanger their water reserves. Watering techniques such as drip irrigation make it possible to save about 50 percent of water. However, as they require a large workforce, they have gradually been abandoned over the past few decades. Growing crops in the desert can seem miraculous, but that leads to the rationing of the population and to the salinization of the underground water and the soil. These agricultural practices and nonsustainable irrigation are the causes for loss of fertility. On a planetary scale, 20% of irrigated lands are affected by salinization and each year from 250.000 to 500.000 hectares are no longer usable for agricultural production.