Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
as the basis of pig forage systems. Pigs love the edge between water and land too as it gives
them limitless opportunities to wallow!
Ponds, streams, lakes and rivers can be integrated into edible ecosystems with great ad-
vantage all round, and every farm has sites where new ponds can be created.
Water has great advantages as a source of renewable energy. Solar and wind generators
only produce electricity when the Sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and this electricity
must be stored in expensive batteries if it is wanted for use at another time. But water stored
in a reservoir relatively high in the landscape can be fed to a turbine just when it is wanted,
and stored as potential energy the rest of the time. On many farms there is potential to col-
lect and store water in this way.
Where the only regular water flow is a stream passing through the lowest part of the
farm there may be little scope for generating electricity with it, but this water still has great
potential. There is a marvellous tool called a ram pump. With only two moving parts, it
uses the energy in a stream to raise part of the flow of that stream to a storage tank much
higher in the landscape. From here it can be fed by gravity to any part of the farm for a
wide variety of uses: animal drinking, domestic, light industrial or garden watering.
Every farm with even a small stream running through it could probably make good use
of a ram pump. It can make the mains supply redundant with energy that would otherwise
flow unused to the sea.
