Tile Drainage: A Strategy to Cope with the Food Challenge Facing Mexico

Hector Manuel Arias-Rojo¹, Steve Craft², Rodrigo Patron², Carlos Baldenebro², Jesus Tarriba²; Arturo Gonzalez C.³, Heber Saucedo³, Rodolfo Namuche³, V. Nahún García³, and Carlos Fuentes³

1. Independent consultant, Mexico

2. Private Drainage Companies, Mexico

3. Instituto Mexicano de Tecnologia del Agua (IMTA), Mexico

Abstract: This paper deals with a drainage strategy to face Mexico’ major challenge: food security for its current and future population. The National Development Program of the current administration defined crop priorities and volumes required for each crop. The irrigation districts in northern Mexico contribute 74.4% of the agricultural production and sustains the largest production of priority crops. Unfortunately, salinity threatens those irrigation districts, with about 24% of the northern Mexico irrigation districts affected by salts. The annual salinization rate was estimated at 10,000 ha/yr. Since the mid-1990s, tile drainage has proved to be a very successful tool to reclaim and control salt affected lands of irrigation districts in Mexico. Moreover, after salinity reclamation, drainage has

restored land productivity to competitive levels. Tile drained lands not affected by salts have also reached competitive productivity, showing that tile drainage is a profitable investment that undoubtedly may contribute with the nation’s food challenge. Salinity of 600,000 ha in the irrigation districts has reduced 1’471,518 t of priority crops such as corn, wheat, sugar cane and sorghum. The national total production goal is 10’970,000 t. It means that tile drainage rehabilitated lands can potentially contribute 13.4% of the national production goal. Some companies have invested in machinery and trained personnel to address this mayor threat to food production. The current estimates of land converted with subsurface drainage is about 100,000 ha in last 20 years. At the current reclamation rate, 5,000 ha/yr, there will be little impact on Mexico’s food challenge, unless more land is reclaimed each year at least to cope with the current salinization. The national agricultural policy is designed to assist farmers by funding drainage needs at a 50:50 of cost, but there is still a difficult barrier due to limited matching funding. Researchers and drainage companies are proposing a strategy, whereby costs can be reduced when drainage installation companies work in neighboring areas. To implement such a strategy, farmers’ and irrigation district’s authorities (as advised by research institutions) need to set priorities and devise regional implementation plans. In this way operation costs could be lowered, and overall benefits optimized to achieve the target of reaching 13.4% of the food

production challenge.

Key words: irrigation, drainage, salinization