I am generally against genetically engineered food, but I have thought of a use for it.<BR>Genetically engineer a food plant (doesn't matter which one, rice, wheat, potatoes, ...) so that it can survive on sea water irrigation. there are plenty of plants to get the genes from (seaweed, Mangrove), but none (or nearly none) are edible.
<B>Advantage:</B> all those water-starved places that are using scarce fresh water for irrigation of marginal land can use sea water. No de-salination plant necessary and no diverting of water causing rivers and lakes to dry out.
You would have to make sure the run-off was kept away from fresh water rivers and lakes, but you could irrigate lots of desert and semi-desert areas near the sea and let the run-off all run back into the sea.
OK, there is an energy requirement to pump the water up from the sea, but there is that at present when water is transported over long distances for irrigation.
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I posted almost the same idea quite a while ago. But if seaweed is used as the basic template modified with genetic additions from edible foods the food can be grown in the sea surrounding the areas of continents so there is no need to pump seawater onto land and poison it with salt. There is a great deal of fertilizer runoff into the Gulf of Mexico which could be taken up by sea grown crops and which now disrupt the ecology of the sea. The growth could also be beneficial in providing places to encourage other marine life which would be a secondary source.The floating farms could be designed to withstand rough weather and harvesting could be done with specialized marine machinery.
One problem assosiated with using salt water for irrigation would be that after a period of time the salt would build up in the soil to such a degree that nothing useful would grow. This is the reason there are not a lot of plants on the Bonneville Salt Flats or fish in the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Salt water would build up, but it should reach a plateau so long as there is a run-off.
The places you describe are inland seas with no run off, the water just evaporates and the salt builds up over the centuries. There is a similar problem where you have fresh water irrigation without runoff, over years salts and fertiliser build up in the soil until it becomes infertile.
According to my anthro prof, salt contamination results in practically irreversible damage to the soil. Salt water is able to ascend columns of drainwater from standard irrigation, much like osmosis within our own bodies.
The anthropology tie-in I forgot to mention is that such a failure of industrialized agriculture (which America is apparently destined for) results in state collapse.
The floating farms idea presented by SAND is exactly what I thought of too but the details needn't require a specific location. Since like sea weed, which is edible and used in SUSHI all the time the farms are floating and can be relocated as weather and tides permit. We currently move parts of oil rigs and other large constructions over the sea. There is another problem to be resolved here and that is the means by which to do this. But I believe we are already half way there.
Someday the sea is going to provide everything we need and as with other forms of evolution a we might adapt by growing gils.