{"id":3356,"date":"2015-06-06T20:30:03","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T00:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2015-06-06T20:36:20","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T00:36:20","slug":"farming-on-salty-soil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2015\/06\/farming-on-salty-soil\/","title":{"rendered":"Farming on salty soil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Salty soil can be caused by a number of problems, including drought and a lack of rainfall to flush salts out of the soil, salt water intrusion and rising sea levels near the coast, and irrigation from salty aquifers.\u00a0 Over time, the salts build up and make it difficult to grow many types of crops.\u00a0 I’ve seen several articles lately on farmers trying to deal with salty soil and find plants that can grow on soil that does not support other crops.<\/p>\n

A National Public Radio (NPR)<\/em> story<\/a> today discussed the impacts of salt on the production of New Mexico’s chiles.\u00a0 The recent drought has accelerated the salty conditions in the soil lately, making it difficult to grow this iconic crop in the Southwest.\u00a0 This is in spite of improvements in farm management that allow them to grow seven times more chile per acre than in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Another NPR<\/em> article<\/a> earlier this week discussed a new hybrid of rice that is better adapted to salty soils than previous varieties.\u00a0 The use of this variety of rice is increasing, particularly in areas with naturally salty soil and areas like Bangladesh where rising sea levels are making the soils more salty over time.<\/p>\n

An article<\/a> last year in Oxy discussed embracing salty conditions and growing halophytes, a type of plant that is well suited to living in salty conditions.\u00a0 While there are halophytes that are used for food, there is more interest in halophytes that can be used to produce fuel.<\/p>\n

And finally, a National Geographic photoessay<\/a> on the Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its water due to diversion of the feeder rivers to irrigate cotton and other thirsty crops, resulting in salt pans and radically changing the lifestyle of the people who live near there<\/p>\n

\"Image:<\/a>
Image: Carolyn Drake\/National Geographic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Source:<\/a>
Source: Tim McCabe\/USDA NRCS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Salty soil can be caused by a number of problems, including drought and a lack of rainfall to flush salts out of the soil, salt water intrusion and rising sea levels near the coast, and irrigation from salty aquifers.\u00a0 Over time, the salts build up and make it difficult to grow many types of crops.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":3359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-coastal","category-crops","category-drought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}