Posted on 10/04/2017 3:58:19 PM PDT by Jagermonster
PATH TO PROGRESS In a patch of barren land that hasn't yielded crops for centuries, engineers from the Sahara Forest Project say they're designing a sustainable farm that uses solar power to desalinate seawater for crops, then uses the runoff to fend off desertification.
AQABA, JORDAN—Hope in Jordan is taking the form of a cucumber in the desert.
It is not a mirage. Some say it is the future.
In the arid southern desert of Wadi Araba, where scorching temperatures and dust devils leave scant signs of life, a team of environmental engineers is working on a solution for countries on the front lines of climate change, facing drought and rising temperatures.
The engineers say they are designing a sustainable farm that uses solar power to desalinate seawater to grow crops in regions that have been arid for centuries, then uses the irrigation runoff to afforest barren lands and fend off desertification.
Similar ventures have had success in neighboring Israel, but it remains to be seen whether a fully sustainable farm can breathe life into the Jordanian desert and offer a model to a country that cannot spare a drop of its dwindling water resources.
Jordan has struggled for decades with water resources over-stressed by dramatic sudden population growth. Driven by waves of refugees, the population nearly doubled, from 5 million in 2004 to 9.5 million in 2015.
Jordan is currently ranked by the United Nations as the second-water-poorest country on the planet, behind only Bahrain, while increasing desertification due to over-grazing and improper irrigation techniques has reduced its grazable lands by 70 percent in the past three decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Read past the inevitable climate change blather. There's some pretty cool stuff going on here - water purification and desert farming technology, cooperation between Jordan and Israel, and work to turn deserts into forests.
I was doing this in Israel in the 1970’s. As a matter of fact, I was a short walk away from Jordan.
Cool!
The first I heard of drip irrigation was how the Israelis were using it to grow orange trees in the desert, sometime during the 60’s.
LOL!
‘Always thought the kids looked Jewish.
That's what the author means by "climate change?"
We grew peppers, onions, melons and dates. We had a machine that built the drippers for export.
Nothing new about doing that, that has been one of the reasons Israel exists. Besides hydroponics and trickle irrigation, Israel also is a leader in water desallination. The Syrian regime blocked one of Jordan's water sources (illegally), decades ago. Israel was required to make up part of that supply under the 1990s peace treaty with Jordan.
Several years ago, Geoff Lawton started a project in Jordan called Greening the Desert. He had all kinds of stuff growing good and there were even mushrooms growing under the mulched areas. The locals had never seen a mushroom and thought there was something strange/bad going on.
Geoff Lawton turned it over to the locals after a while and within a year, it was desert again because they were just taking from the system and not maintaining or putting anything back into it.
Writers from centuries ago talked of muslim’s sloppy agricultural practices.
You can lead a horse to water but.......
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Israel is in an unique position to help Arabs, which is why they hate us so.
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