Peru's ancient irrigation systems turned deserts into farms because of culture

Seeing the north coast of Peru for the first time, you would be hard-pressed to believe it’s one of the driest deserts in the world. Parts of the region receive less than an inch of rain in an entire year. Yet, water and greenery are everywhere. This is the nation’s agro-industrial heartland, and, thanks to irrigation canals, almost every inch of the floodplain is blanketed in lucrative export crops, such as sugarcane, asparagus and blueberries. However, the apparent success of this system masks an underlying fragility. Water shortages have plagued the region for centuries, and now modern climate change combined with agro-industrial practices have further intensified droughts. In response, the Peruvian government has invested billions of dollars in irrigation infrastructure in recent years designed to deliver more water from a resource more than 100 miles away: glaciers in the Andes. But the Andean glaciers are disappearing as global temperatures rise. Peru has lost over half its g ... Read full article.