Cornstarch makes a great gravy, and it seems, also an effective way to hold water in soil. A product called Zeba, made from corn starch and only cornstarch, holds up to 500 times its own weight in water. Absorbent Technologies, Inc., of Beaverton, Oregon, started up in 2002 and has been on the market with Zeba since 2004.
     A Wall Street Journal blog report from today -- http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/08/28/absorbent-technologies-copes-with-vcs-fear-of-the-f-words/
-- recounts the founders' problems with raising money from venture capitalists. VCs don't like the words "farm" or "factory." Seems the company has plans to sell to farmers, and is hoping to construct a factory to make 30 million pounds of the stuff annually.
     The Zeba technology is licensed from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, and is based on a product whose scientific name is saponified starch-graft polyacrylonitrile copolymers. Developed in 1973 and patented in 1976, the ever-playful ARS lab rate nicknamed their discovery "Super Slurper."
     A number of product successes have grown out of Super Slurper. It's been used for packaging, seed coatings, root treatments, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even a filter for gas pumps. But I couldn't find anybody that was planning to make and sell 30 million pounds of the stuff.
     In the perennially parched Southwest, Zeba could drastically reduce the need for irrigation in some crops. Not enough, perhaps, to bring the southernmost reaches of the Colorado back to life, but enough to cut irrigation costs.
     Did anybody in the Lancaster Farming readership area - Maine to Virginia - need Zeba this year to get a good crop of corn or anything else? No. But who knows what next year will be like? 
     Zeba's probably too expensive to spread on land here anyway. But for houseplants, gardens and nursery crops, it might be worth investigating. There's more product information here http://www.friendsofwater.com/Zeba_Quench.html and an interesting history from the ARS here http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/may96/starch0596.htm


     TMDL "consequences" were a topic of discussion earlier this week at a Chesapeake Bay conference held in Lancaster. TMDL is shorthand for total maximum daily load of plant nutrients and sediment allowed to enter waterways bound for the Bay. New rules call for monitoring TMDLs from both point source (e.g., wastewater treatment plants) and non-point (e.g., farms) sources. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres attended the conference and wrote the page one article for the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.

    
     Here's an idea for a new cash crop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUvNnmFtgI&feature=player_embedded