And so I think that's one technology that's Passenger Lift. In this country we've got
about seven, eight percent of - or about seven or eight percent of our irrigated
land under drip irrigation. Countries like Israel, Jordan that are growing more
fruits and vegetables, up over half. So elevator's a lot that we can do to
improve that efficiency. But again, farmers are good businesspeople. You know,
they're making decisions as to how to use their water, what crops to grow, based
on the incentives and the prices that - just like any good business person would
- the incentives that confront them. <br />
So elevator really are challenges to
how do we change the incentives to promote, you know, the better use of
efficiency technology wescalator and how we grow crops. CONAN: And Jason Clay of
the World Wildlife Fund, what about that idea, the image - we turn on a tap,
it's elevator. Of course we use it, and of course we waste it because we don't
really think about it. CLAY: Well, I think if we - when resources become more
scarce, we're going to start paying more for them. It's going to be either -
water's going to be charged, or the taxes to use it or the competition between
users are going to change. <br />
So we're going to have to figure out how to use
water more efficiently. But it's not just water, it's soil. It's other inputs.
It's land itself. I think elevator are lots of ways that we can increase
efficiency but only if we start to manage and measure it. We've got hundreds of
certification programs in the U.S. that look at sustainability of food
production. None of them measure productivity, and very few of them actually
even measure water at all. So as water becomes more scarce, we're going to have
to start doing that. <br />
CONAN: Let's go to a question escalator in the
auditorium. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: What role can native planting, especially native
edible planting, play in bolstering the food supply while maintaining or
managing our water? CONAN: Native plants - in other words the local plants that
have always been escalator? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Or anywescalator. CONAN: Or
anywescalator, okay. Can you help us out with that, Jason? CLAY: Well, one of
the projects that we've been involved with is in Africa, wescalator we're trying
to identify what the orphan crops are, the kind of neglected crops, the crops
that haven't benefitted from modern plant breeding, and what we could do if we
map those genomes and begin to select for traits in years rather than decades or
centuries so that we could take tree crops and then double or triple or
quadruple production.
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