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Jan 6, 2023Liked by Adetokunbo Abiola

The right question to ask is "Why river flows are dropping worldwide?".

Cities water consumption, crop irrigation or Climate Change are part of this question, but on the other hand, why forests don't need any watering at all, and are flush with water?

Would switching most food production to agroforestry do any change to water usage?

Keeping lots of green cover on land, be it a food agroforest or not, means constant or increased carbon sink and, by the way, it provides additional use to cattle manure and a way to prevent nitrogenous polutants ending up in rivers and coastal waters.

It means agrobusiness needs to go beyond Organic (see Syntropic Agriculture), to source organic matter locally with green cover, and not sourcing it using fossil fuels half world far and underground.

Conclusion: current crop production methods usually breaks the local soil ecology and disrupts its water cycle, creating conditions to rainwater to easily becaming runoff water that depletes organic topsoil, clogging and flushing nitrogenous compounds into rivers.

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I love the idea of not sourcing organic matter using fossil fuels, and syntropic agriculture provides a good way of doing this, by planting water and looking for plants that are green throughout the year. Of course, it would mean dispensing with or modifying current crop production methods, but this is necessary, if we're to stop flushing dangerous compounds into streams, rivers, and oceans.

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We can combat the drying up of rivers and the degradation of our water resources by reforesting as much land as possible, as soon as possible. Over the past century, we've lost as much forest as we did in 10,000 years of human agricultural history, with animal agriculture being a major driver.

By switching to plant-based diets, we could reforest and rewild up to 3 billion hectares of agricultural land, which would not only restore natural ecosystems but also help recharge our rivers and groundwater systems. Reforesting such vast areas would stabilize the water cycle, improve water retention, and reduce runoff, directly addressing the crisis of drying rivers.

Do what matters. Go vegan.

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Thanks for your insight on reforesting. I believe we need it for very many reasons, including stabilizing the water cycle, improvement of water retention, and the reduction of runoff. One way of reforesting could be, as you said, adopting a vegan lifestyle, which I believe is the best one people should adopt. Thanks once again for your insight.

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