qld crop in the balance, page-2

I'm grabbing the 30-06 and taking a drive through Darling Downs this weekend. 6 weeks ago the crops around Dalby were magnificant. But am hearing its now critical unless rain arrives very soon. meanwhile the drought/water situation in India continues to deterioate.... and with no solution that i can foresee preventing food riots by year-end.

India's challenges mountAugust 28, 2009 - 3:25PM .
India's future is threatened by shortages of food, water and energy and these should be addressed on a priority basis, the Prime Minister's security adviser said.

''These are part of a broad national security plan, and defense is only one aspect of it,'' Shekhar Dutt, India's deputy national security adviser said in an interview yesterday. ''We think water is going to be a very severe determinant of prosperity and well-being.''

Inadequate rainfall this year has led to a drought in as many as 278 of the nation's 626 districts, according to the farm ministry.
This has sparked concern over food shortages and rising prices, prompting authorities in three states to raid suspected commodity hoarders, the Financial Times reported today. Raw sugar futures have soared 90 per cent this year.

With more than 70 per cent of India's population living on less than $US2 a day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is addressing all aspects of internal security including jobs, infrastructure and literacy in addition to external defense. In the next five years India plans to invest as much as $US35 billion ($42 billion) on new weapons to modernize its military.

Power shortages impede development in India as more than 400 million people lack electricity and supply falls short of peak demand by 16.6 per cent, the World Bank said in June. An agreement with the Bush administration that gave India access to nuclear technology and fuel for power generation also fits into the national security energy mix, Dutt said. The deal ended India's nuclear isolation dating back to 1974, when it tested its first atomic bomb.

Wind energy

In 2008 India's installed capacity in wind-energy was the fifth largest after US, Germany, Spain and China, according to the Global Wind 2008 report by Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council. The government is also putting the final touches to a national plan aimed at boosting solar energy.

With dam-based irrigation having nearly reached its capacity of about 50 million hectares, additional water storage can be possible only with water harvesting, Dutt said.

''In the next 20 years water harvesting will become the most important feature to generate groundwater storage more effectively than major dams,'' he said.

Three northwest Indian states lost a volume of water from underground supplies equal to more than twice the capacity of Lake Mead, the biggest US reservoir, between August 2002 and October 2008, scientists said in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Nature.

Without measures to curb demand, dwindling groundwater supplies may cause drinking-water shortages and erode crop production in a region inhabited by 114 million people, the authors said. Water harvesting involves collecting rain from rooftops and local catchments and capturing seasonal floodwaters.

India is also studying ways to enlarge the country's manufacturing industry to provide jobs to its citizens who are only partly employed by the agricultural sector.

''Every major power has become one on the strength of its manufacturing sector,'' Dutt said.

Bloomberg News