The Solution To Bangladesh's Salty Soil

Soil salinity is a problem as old as agriculture itself. Salts in the soil can be caused naturally – the erosion of various minerals or the influence of a nearby ocean can lead to rising levels of salinity. Low doses of salts are naturally present in rivers, lakes, streams, aquifers and even rainwater. But more common these days are man-made reasons. And those call for man-made solutions, Amy Yee of NPR reports.

Soil salinity caused by human actions have been ramping up recently. Some fertilizers, especially those high in potassium, leave salts behind. Stripping the land of forest can cause salts to leach into the soil. And rising sea levels, an effect of climate change, can force high-salinity ocean water upstream in rivers, which ends up in the soil through irrigation. It’s a mess.

Salty soil is incredibly damaging for crop yields. In Bangladesh, rice paddies have become dangerously high in salt after years of climate change and a failure to use certain pump-drive drainage techniques have all led to barren fields. There are ways to combat salty soil, but they’re expensive and require a lot of infrastructure changes to allow the salt to gather and be removed, and Bangladesh’s rice paddies aren’t set up for it. Salty soil is no good for plants; they find it hard to suck up the nutrients they need from the soil, and yield can be decreased by as much as a third. That’s a huge problem for a country that gets 70 percent of its calories from rice.

NPR reports that scientists are on the case. At the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, scientists have cross-bred naturally salt-resistant varieties of rice and have come up with one that’s extremely hardy in even the saltiest of soils. And they’re giving the seeds out for free to Bangladeshi farmers. Another possible solution: look to plants that don’t mind salty soil so much, like sunflowers.

But those solutions seem awfully short-term. Perhaps they’ll bring attention to the sometimes unexpected ways in which climate change – and agricultural practices – can wreak havoc on the land. And, of course, how important soil really is, no matter the size of your farm.

Image via Flickr user Melanie Ko

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