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Originally Posted by Webstral
I like the idea very much. However, I hadn’t taken CAP water into account for agriculture in Thunder Empire. The irrigation water in SAMAD comes from local wells and is distributed by hand from hoses and water buckets into plots that are about 100 square feet (20’ x 5’). A Chinese gardener from North China of the mid-1800’s would feel very at home growing food in SAMAD in 2000. This method is very labor intensive, but it preserves the resource that is in scarcest supply: good ol’ water. In fact, the more I read about Chinese agriculture of days gone by, the more parallels I see between SAMAD and late Manchu China. The similarities are so striking, that I have begun to refer to the intensive gardening practices and the way they shape the society as a sinification of southern Arizona.
Of course, not all food is produced this way. The Iraqi and Central Asian EPW prove invaluable partners in agriculture. Several of them have experience growing cereal crops on semi-arid land using modern or semi-modern techniques. The Huachuca library, built during 1996 and 1997, has invaluable information on Spanish techniques for managing agricultural land at risk of desertification. The initial trials are not especially successful; fortunately, the society isn’t depending on the first harvest. The second round of plantings goes much better, and oats become a part of the Samadi diet. (Corn-oat bread, anyone?)
There are some other techniques in use borrowed from First Nations (that’s what we’re calling Native Americans these days, right?), Africans, and peoples of the Indian subcontinent. All of them specialize in substituting labor for water. As an added bonus, the health of the soil increases dramatically as a result of the labor invested. The drawback, of course, is that the economy reverts to an agricultural economy in which 75% of the population is directly involved in food production in one fashion or another.
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I think this is really interesting. You've obviously given this a lot of thought and done your homework. Huachuca could likely subsist on the type of farming you've described here. It'd be cool to actually see what could and could not be accomplished (although I hope we don't ever have to try it) using non-traditional/non-western style agricultural techniques. I'm all in favor of a return to more natural, eco-friendly and sustainable farming. I'm just very doubtful that Tucson could sustain even close to a quarter of its current population without the CAP water. Most of our food is imported (most of that from Cali and Mexico) and taht would be unavailable in the Twilight World. The #1 crop out here seems to be cotton. Even that requires a lot of water and most of that comes from the CAP. I live less than a mile from the main CAP feeder (I cross it nearly every day). As I drive to work most days, I see farmhands dropping sections of plastic tubing into the canals to feed water to their fields. Once that canal water dries up, I don't see any way for crops out here to survive.
Then there's the matter of fertilizer and pesticides. I get buzzed by cropdusters about once a week. It's a pretty cool experience until I remember about all the chemicals that they're dumping just meters away. Once again, I'm no expert, but I've read a few things about farming here in the U.S. in general bemoaning the overuse of fertilizers on large "industrial" farms. I wonder how much fertilizers the farmers here in Marana use. I wonder how much yields out here would drop if they weren't using chemical fertilizer and pesticides.
Anyway, I don't want you to think that I'm ragging on your work. It's just hard not to think about this kind of stuff when I'm living in S. Arizona farm country and involved in T2K.
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Originally Posted by Webstral
Fair enough. Rather than argue about whether the conditions for administering antibiotics on a wide scale in Phoenix exist in mid-1998, I’ll go with the pneumonic plague. I don’t even need a mutated version. Once the downward spiral kicks in hard, the Valley of the Sun becomes a nightmare in short order.
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You're absolutely right on the antibiotics count. Shortages of said would allow "ordinary" Bubonic plague to become more than just a nuisance. Still, basic hygiene and pest control efforts would go far in slowing its spread. For large-scale mortality, the Pneumonic variant is the way to go.