One of the most creative proposals I have seen for combining wastewater effluent with labour-intensive farming for job creation comes from Robbie Robinson in South Africa. He says that low-quality agricultural land is already being used with subsurface drip irrigation fed with dolomitic water from gold mines. He figures that clusters of small-lot farms could use the millions of kilolitres of water produced by the mines to grow rows of crops in rotation, so that a central biofuel production plant could be supplied with feedstock throughout the year, and the farmers would have a continuous income.
[Source: The Star (Johannesburg), 17 November 2006]
