[foobar33333]

You might be interested in this solar project in Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms

This farm grows a huge amount of tomatoes in the desert. It has its own water desalination plant powered by solar. Unlike most of the stuff you see, this isn't PV solar generating electricity, but just a bunch of mirrors pointed at a single point to collect a huge amount of heat to generate fresh water.

Just look at the land in the photo on wikipedia and imagine how much food could be produced in this space.

[marcus_holmes]

I've always thought that the vast aquifer in the centre of Aus, plus abundant sunlight, should make for easy desalination and irrigation. Glad to see someone's working on it :)

But they can chuck the leftover salt back into the ocean. That's harder to do away from the coast.

[nielsbot]

Can't they just pile it up in a huge salt mountain?

[foobar33333]

The salt would leach in to the ground, killing any plant life in the area for a very very long time.