The slides for our final design have been published today.  Although these have been ready for several months now, I just haven't had a chance to publish them.  Thanks to Meryl Richards for her collaboration on this project. 

We'll publish more details on the project in the very near future.  In the meantime, have a look at some of the slides.

Final Design Slide Show 

Existing Water Catchment Infrastructure at Target Site

The Project Permaculture water harvesting project has taken a new and interesting turn.  Today we are Open Sourcing the entire design process.  We hope this will bring interesting commentary, insightful suggestions, and harsh criticism from our small but growing user community here at agroinnovations.com.

Project Background: The site is located in the community of Tipa Tipa, in the Tipajara watershed between the larger towns of Mizque and Aiquile.  For a more detailed account of the site conditions, you can have a look at my Master's thesis.

The environmental crisis in this sector, and in the Bolivian valleys and highlands, is manifold:

• Massive soil erosion, deforestation, and land degradation

• Economic collapse and subsequent migration due to poor farm systems management

• Extreme scarcity of water and arable land

In an attempt to find an integrated, ecological and socioeconomic solution to these problems, Agricultural Innovations has been working in close collaboration with Meryl Richards of Dartmouth University to design an integrated waterharvesting scheme as a model for demonstration and future implementation. 

The dialoge between Meryl, myself, and any other interested participants is now completely open and transparent.  We will be communicating back and forth as we develop the design via the agroinnovations forum.  

Also, different iterations of the GIS dataset are available via our downloads section.

For the last 40 years, we have seen a tremendous effort in the development of various appropriate technologies for every type of imaginable application.  Volumes have been written, projects have been implemented and documented, success stories abound in Third World development literature.  Yet despite all of this, the Appropriate Technology movement has failed to achieve widespread integration of these technologies into sustainable resource management systems.  Furthermore, the movement has failed to cross the chasm with appropriate technology.  According to Moore (1991), the chasm has been crossed when the chain of adoption goes beyond innovators and first time adopters, and reaches a critical mass at which widespread adoption converts a novel idea into a commonly accepted technology. 

The list of successful appropriate technologies is dizzying in its scope:  solar ovens, windmills for electric and mechanical power, food dehydrators, animal traction implements, hydraulic pumps, composting latrines, water harvesting devices, and biogas converters, to name but a few.  Such an impressive list begs answers to some of the most fundamental questions that the movement now faces:  Where are these technologies?  Why have they not reached a critical mass and moved beyond the innovators and early adopters into the main stream?  And inevitably: What will it take to cross the chasm?

This document attempts to present a methodological approach within a social and cultural context in which some of these important questions can be addressed. 

Download it here, or visit our downloads section.

Over the next four months or so, I will be conducting a collaborative project with Agricultural Innovations aimed at integrating a contour-cultivation method of water harvesting with an aquaculture and/or CEA (controlled environment agriculture) facility.  The goal is to direct water away from its normal path of flow (down the steepest land gradient, into streams and eventually to the ocean) to planted areas and storage facilities where it can be used for agricultural purposes.  This will both reduce erosion and greatly increase the water available for productive purposes.  The design will be based partly on the work of P.A. and Ken Yeomans.