With global rises in atmospheric CO2, sea level, and warming trends that it seems a possible solution to our impending climate change issues have also provided us with some opportunities. The USDA could become more self-sustaining if they were to take on a project to collaborate with other foreign governments to harvest sand from the world’s deserts, create and sell sandbags to many disadvantaged regions of the world to build affordable and durable housing solutions and security barriers.
This would begin to reduce/reverse desertification, enable farms to start growing crops and enable forest growth in currently inaccessible areas (creating jobs) and provide the USDA with the necessary resources to begin global irrigation projects.
If the polar ice caps continue to add fresh water to the world’s oceans at an increased rate, one solution could be diverting 5% of the worlds major ocean bound rivers into pipelines and aqua ducts to natural and man-made reservoirs utilized to irrigate existing and new forests (reducing wild fire damage) and provide water to new farms.
The flood water run off in places like southern California could be collected, purified, and used to offset the annual drought issues. It would cost a bit, but the overall savings in reduced wildfire damage and increased supply of food would provide a rather rapid return on investment. The only argument I’ve heard against this is that the water contains dangerous toxins (and yet we let it flood into our oceans).