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Sewage waters a tenth of world's irrigated crops
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[link to www.newscientist.com]
* 12:01 18 August 2004
* NewScientist.com news service
* Fred Pearce, Stockholm
A tenth of the world’s irrigated crops - everything from lettuce and tomatoes to mangoes and coconuts - are watered by sewage. And much of that sewage is raw and untreated, gushing direct from sewer pipes into fields at the fringes of the developing world’s great megacities, reveals the first global survey of the hidden practice of waste-water irrigation.
And, however much consumers may squirm, farmers like it that way. Because the stinking, lumpy and pathogen-rich sewage is rich in nitrates and phosphates that fertilise crops free of charge, suggests the survey presented at the Stockholm Water Symposium on Tuesday.
“Wastewater irrigation is in an institutional no-man’s land,” said Chris Scott of the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute, co-editor of the study. “Water, health and agriculture ministries in many countries outlaw the practice, but refuse to recognise that it is widespread.”
He estimates that 20 million hectares of the world’s farms are irrigated with sewage. A quarter of Pakistan’s vegetables, including salad crops, are grown in sewage effluent, the study found.
more at above
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