Fundamentals of Agricultural Drainage Engineering

In the 20th century, agricultural land drainage brought about tremendous increase of crop production in Europe and North America. However lack of knowledge of its principles and attendant practices in other areas of the world, resulted in production stagnation and famine. Traditional farming methods and practices are still rampant in Africa, Latin American, India and Asia which constitute over 50% of the world food consuming area where few farmlands are designed with engineering skills and drainage. This, with imminent global population explosion and the impacts of climate change, are threats to global food sufficiency. This book provides the fundamental knowledge into problem soils and crops characteristics in land drainage; response of basic tropical crops to drainage; theory and details of drainage equations; simplified drainage plan where excess water originates from local rainfall, pump systems and practices that could be used for different soils and crops for good farm drainage system to increase crop production. The exercises and project at the end, makes the book useful for students, farm mangers, civil, agricultural engineers and consultants in agricultural practices.