Innovating with Water in Serra Malagueta: Domingos Monteiro

A lot of people think of alcohol as a social problem. For Monteiro--an innovative farmer who lives in Santiago’s Serra Malagueta Natural Park--it’s an environmental solution.
“Beer bottles are something we have a lot of,” he explains pointing to the wall of horizontal bottles that serves as terracing on his mountainous farm. But it does more than just prevent erosion: “During the rainy season, water seeps through the soil into the bottles and is trapped. Then, in the dry season, that water seeps out, humidifying soil.” It saves money on irrigation costs but also on building materials: Bricks, the standard construction material, “cost 80 cents a piece these days,” he explains. “Bottles are free.” And just in case you thought it might reflect a serious problem, it doesn’t: at least for Domingos, who swears he did not drink all the beers himself.
The plant beds above Domginos’s bottle terraces feature long black strips of tubing with pin-size holes. These are part of his drip irrigation system, which strategically directs water to the stem of each plant. Despite the big overhead cost, such precise watering saves lots of money in the long run. “If you need 1000 liters of water a day to water your field, with drip irrigation, you can use just 200 liters…You can make up your initial investment in no time.” It also cuts down on erosion, helps preserve soil nutrients, and minimizes labor costs.
And Domingo’s irrigation system doesn’t just economize water: it economizes fog. On the steep rocks above his home, a series of huge synthetic nets anchored to wood frames face the blustery wind that whips through the highlands. The wind is actually a dense fog that deposits moisture on the nets. Droplets of condensed fog fall into horizontal troughs below, before passing through a filter into a holding tank that can direct water home or to the garden. The two-by-three meter nets can produce between 600 and 1000 liters of water a day, depending on weather conditions and net quality. While Domingos did not discover the system, he became intrigued by it when he noticed condensation forming each morning on his chicken coop. “If Serra had another 10 of these, we would be completely self-sufficient in terms of water,” he said.
Even more impressive than the ingenuity behind these projects is the fact that Domingos is trying new approaches to old problems.“I think as people start to see these projects succeeding, they will start to try them, too,” he says.