F.F.


Thank-you for your considered reply.  Here I must go on a counter-offensive by asserting, without a proper survey of the Turkish-Syrian border woodlands, that there definitely won't be enough green twigs nor dry twigs to set up agricultural production to feed everyone in those camps, such that they can all go home with a pamplet, start farming, and have any reasonable expectation of not starving before net food production is sufficient. 

The starting point of all my considerations is that photosynthesis always includes a reaction starting from n(H2O)+m(CO2)
Given the chemistry understanding of photosynthesis, life as we know it will not ever happen without some water going in to build tree twigs.  From now on, I will always disagree with your assertion that waterless farming is possible, but I did read the book first before saying that and thank you for your efforts to try.

I also don't have the money for a desal plant and freshwater supply canal on the scale envisaged; I asked to see whether specialists and civil engineering students think that it could be done with $20billion, which is definitely less than the murderous problems out there, or needs a bit more than that, comparable to X months of US treasury overspend.  If it could rescue sufficient agriculture to help out several countries and regions ( Turkey, Kurdistan, Daish, Northern Syrian Rebels, Damascus-Syrians, Hezzbollah, and possibly Isreal, Gaza, Jordan and Egypt too) then they could shake hands and start digging canals instead of battle tunnels, buy reverse osmosis tubes instead of rocket-shells, and so on the scale of maximum effort by everyone who lives there.

From now on, I do not agree with the claim of F.F. that waterless farming can be viable in arid regions, and ask everyone who lives there to go to maximum international co-oporative effort to build water desal and renewable energy systems (which may be daylight-only if that helps) to power farmwater production for the region.  Then use techniques from the book of F.F to obtain a multiplier of usefullness of that water by careful irrigation and mulching.  I read that the productivity of a Waitrose orange farm in southern Spain was 40 oranges per metric ton of water.  Please can anyone with agricultural experience in the middle east post here with figures for the water-efficiency of what they do.