A 21st Century Long-Term Water Conservation Technology for Converting Sandy Soils into Sustainable Agricultural Production in Arid Dryland Regions of Northern China.

Subsurface water retention membranes have been designed to double soil water holding capacities in the root zones of sand soils.  Greater quantities of plant available water provide drought resilience to plants in high rainfall or irrigated arid regions. These Michigan State University soil water retention technology (SWRT) membranes are installed at strategic depths and distributions by commercial membrane installation chisels. Current SWRT technologies are an improvement of earlier asphalt water retention projects that improved rice and sugarcane production in the USA, Australia, Taiwan and South Africa 48 years ago. During the past four years SWRT improved water retention has been tested in soil columns, large lysimeters and field studies locates in Arizona, California, Michigan, Texas, China, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. These projects have been established to address the growing demands for food production while using less water. Current projections of 9.6 billion human populations plus more animals will require 70% more food with at least 40% more water at current water use efficiencies.  Localized droughts combined with reductions in stored surface water and receding groundwater levels demand new technologies for improving soil water retention that increases irrigation water use efficiency. Since the majority of highly productive soils are currently farmed, innovative approaches are needed to convert irrigated sands into long-term sustainable agriculture production while producing additional ecosystem services. This presentation will report how doubling the water holding capacity of sand soil can increase production of irrigated vegetables and corn by 40% and 230% and rain-fed cotton by 500%. Installation rates, budgets and return on investments are also being considered for additional projects using surface water from the Yellow River for the Hetao Irrigation District of Inner Mongolia in the dryland region of North Central China.