It is the same.
Course, they've worked it out
how they can drain the salt out
by putting in diversion drains.
Now it's not having any effect on the aquifer
and it's improving the land.
The land is getting better because you're desalting it.
Few background noises.
We've got a metal door, neighbors across the road
with sheep and goats.
People trying to finish that water tank up above.
We're in a rural village.
Excuse the funny sound effects.
I'll just put that in now before we get more of them.
So, back to Iraqi desaltation system.
Now you're in the Fertile Crescent.
The oldest city on earth
is in between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
And that is Erbil.
Now Erbil and Damascus are both 12,000 years old
of permanent occupation.
Jericho, I can nearly see Jericho
through the trees behind the camera
is 10,000 years of permanent occupation,
but the two oldest, Erbil and Damascus in Syria.
12,000 years of permanent occupation,
there's been a bit of deforestation.
There's been a bit of changes to the environment
and there isn't enough trees in the total environment.
And what happens is you get a leach in the salt
and it's not good putting the hyper saltinated water
into the river.
And it's not good if you use the river water
again for irrigation.
Cause you're bringing the salts back a little bit.
The rain, not a problem.
Now, if you aim that water towards systems
that mitigate evaporation,
which the Iraqis traditionally did,
the largest diversity of date genetics in the world
is between Baghdad and Basra
in between the Euphrates and the Tigris.
So, they actually worked in shade agriculture.
They worked with gardens that were like crop gardens,
no bigger than a quarter of an acre to half an acre,
1000 to 2000 square meters
because they knew to stop the land salting up
you've got to reduce the evaporation.
And you do that with, hey, what's sitting right here?
A date palm.
This is a young one, only about eight years old,
started fruiting now,
but it'll go on for a couple of hundred years
and shade these systems,
reducing evaporation and making our systems more efficient.
And the water then gets trapped in the root net of the trees
around the small crop clearance.
You can't go bigger.
Now people have desalted the landscape
with what we call modern industrial agriculture.
To reverse it, We've got to decelerate to survive
with these ditches and then aim any water we're using
towards not just crops and not just fast money systems,
but permanent systems of perennial agriculture
with small clearance in the middle.
That's always the answer.
You go in the wards, permanence at whatever it takes
and in really hot dry landscapes, it's reducing evaporation.
First thing you do with permaculture design and hot arid
is antievaporation strategies.
So keep going, date palm.
Got a lot of work to do for a long time.
You're permanently employed.
One of the great overstory combinations of dry lands,
the date, but you need 40 degrees plus for two months.
We got a couple of days coming up at 41
just when our PDC starts.
It's going to be torture for people who are not used to it,
but you need plus 40 for over two months
to get good fruit like this.
That, in America, that's at a hundred degrees
for more than a hundred days they say.
Another saying, American saying, the dates.
Okay, let's move on, another big question.
Holly Cook, Northern New England USA, cold temperate.
Sounds like we've got a water pump in the background.
All right, a lot of water gets delivered in this area.
We're very deprived of water.
The mains water comes on for just two hours a week, right?
So we fill tanks with that so we can drink
and then bring in other water, big story,
but you need 20 times the area of water harvest into one,
to the same, to one area of cropping.
So on average in dry land,
you need 20 acres of catchment to one acre of production.