Lush Green Terraces Top the Palestine Museum by Heneghan Peng
Dublin’s Heneghan Peng has designed a new museum for Palestine that is topped with a series of unfolding green terraces planted with vegetation that also grows in the surrounding hills.
agriculture
Ancient Egyptian River Could be Revived for Farming
Researchers from Al-Azhar University, Boston University and the University of North Carolina have discovered an ancient river that may be revived, in theory, to irrigate Egypt’s farm lands.
Molasses is Egypt’s Favorite Sugary Treat
It is hard to find a house anywhere in the world that doesn’t have sugar in the pantry, but in Egypt, molasses is the number one sweet treat. This is particularly true of Upper Egypt (the southern half of the country), the site of many sugar cane plantations.
Superpower “Laxative Nut” Jatropha Tree Could Solve Egypt’s Fuel Crisis
In Egypt, people often have to line up for hours to fill their cars and trucks with diesel fuel – particularly during summer months when it comes at a premium. Concerned to ease these shortages, as well as pollution and climate change, Egyptian agricultural engineer Wadad Khaireddine is pushing to grow a desert full of […]
Turkey Bans 26 Genetically Modified Organisms
While the United States is completely in bed with companies that manufacture genetically modified organisms (GMOs), countries in other parts of the world are resisting their relentless push to populate the planet with their patented seeds. Turkey is the latest country to ban 26 GMOs following an incident involving the unauthorized entry of genetically modified […]
Guacamole that tastes like California in the western east
In Israel and well all over the western east, avocado season has arrived. Plump, green avocados are grown from the north of Israel down to Jaffa in the center, all the way to agricultural communities in the southern Negev, such as Neot Semadar. It is both a local favorite and a major national export. In 2010 […]
Direct Seeding Helps Moroccan Farmers Adapt to Climate Change
Farming is risky business in Morocco, where a 30 percent drop in precipitation since 1970 makes steady, predictable annual crop yields virtually impossible. So the World Bank was called in to help implement Plan Maroc Vert – an ambitious initiative designed to boost the country’s cereal production and create a more sustainable agricultural sector by 2020. […]
Locusts Swarm Lebanon. Fodder for a Tasty Treat?
Locusts that bred in southern Egypt first swarmed Cairo, causing panic in Israel and Jordan, and now Lebanese farmers are battling the pests as well. Farmers in the north and south of Lebanon reported locust clouds over the weekend and expressed concern over the impact the insects would have on their crops. But the Agriculture Ministry […]
Seedy 40 Ton GMO Shipment in Egypt Shrouded in Mystery
A new report published by a non-for-profit organization that promotes crop biotechnology has cast doubt on the status of a 40 ton shipment of genetically modified Monsanto maize that entered Egypt last year, local paper Egypt Independent recently reported. Hot on the trail of GMOs in the food-scarce country, journalist Louise Sarant talked with activists and […]
Egypt’s Locust Swarm May Hit Israel and Jordan Next
Israel has set up a special task force to prepare for the possibility that a locust swarm may migrate from Egypt and destroy precious crops. Already some sources are saying that a small swarm of locusts has been spotted in the southern Gaza strip after millions of locusts descended upon various Cairo neighborhoods over the […]
New Clean Tech Map Reveals Israel’s Global Green Influence
Israel NewTech has launched a interactive map of green Israeli innovations as part of a new Industry, Trade & Labor Ministry campaign that aims to showcase the country’s international influence in the clean tech and energy sectors. We have been frustrated with the slow pace at which Israel has incorporated some of its own homegrown […]
Sustainable Fields of Knowledge Campus Evokes Israel’s Agricultural Roots
If there’s something that the Israelis do as well as or even better than clean tech, it is agriculture. When the state was established in the mid 20th century, the first pioneers faced large swaths of dry and barren land. It is part of the country’s legacy that they then proceeded to transform this wasteland […]
Israel Uses CIA and FBI Technologies to Find Pesticides
Farmers and consumers face a new kind of chemical terror: pesticides. Since it is very difficult to detect the presence of toxic chemicals in various crops, an Israeli organization has deployed a failsafe method to root out the threat using the same kind of equipment used by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau […]
Disgusting Flood of Fracking Water Devastates Egyptian Village
Image of flooding in Fares by Abu El Fadl, Egypt Independent Port Said and Cairo have been dominating Egyptian headlines of late, while Fares, a small agricultural community 75 km north of Aswan, has gone completely unnoticed despite enduring a humanitarian tragedy of epic proportions. Since 2009, after DanaGas began to drill pilot hydraulic fracturing wells […]
Hydropolis Aims to Restore the Nile Valley’s Natural Agricultural Rhythm
Just about everyone learned in their early geography classes that the Nile Valley was once a fertile haven. Crops proliferated on the green banks due to natural flooding that deposited rich nutrients, although occasionally these floods inundated and destroyed crops as well, and the land of the Pharaohs was a mecca for agriculture. But when […]
A Farmer’s Market in Dead Dry Qatar
It’s strange that a farmer’s market should make news, but when it’s in Qatar, one of the driest and least food secure nations on earth, a farmer’s market is a big deal. So much so that local professional photographer Mohammed Ismail stopped by for a shoot. Located 30 kilometers outside of the capital Doha, where […]
RecycloEgy Aims to Scrub Cairo’s Black Cloud and Make Money
Every year when farmers start harvesting their sugar cane, maize and other crops, Cairenes brace themselves for what is ominously known as “The Black Cloud.” Caused when seasonal meteorological conditions meet the smoke released by burning agricultural waste, the heavy black pollution settles over an already smoggy Cairo, and respiratory diseases flourish. Now a new […]
Morflora’s Plant “Vaccine” Boosts Food Production Without Using GMOs
A new seed treatment could stop the use and need for GMOs. Even though organic agriculture and sustainable farming practices are on the rise, feeding a hungry world demands that commercial farmers rely on genetically engineered (GMO) seeds to boost production and fend off diseases. But environmentalists fear that GMO crops are a sort of […]
Israel’s High Court Spares West Bank Agriculture
Israel’s high court has ordered the state to come up with an alternative to a separation fence that would have threatened valuable agricultural land in the West Bank. The fence was planned for an area near Battir that Palestinians have been farming for hundreds of years using traditional techniques, but in a historic provisional ruling, […]
Organic Farming Boom in Palestine
A back-to-the-land movement is blossoming in the Palestinian Authority, the United Nation’s newest nonmember observer state. “The Palestinian future is in the land.” Farmer Khader Khader said, standing in his organic olive grove in the northern West Bank village of Nus Jubail. Many Palestinian farmers are switching to organic farming methods, and selling their oil to […]
Arab and Jewish Teenagers Grow Algae for a Greener Future
Despite the many wounds that cripple cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian governments, Arab and Jewish teenagers work side by side to further algae research in Israel. Established in 2008, the Micro Algae Educational Project packs two important imperatives into one succinct program for high school students: ecology and social healing. Conducted in the Eco […]
Israel Strengthens Environmental Ties to Africa: Part 2
Investing in African Agriculture This past April, MASHAV, Israel’s agency for international development cooperation, signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The memorandum is aimed at addressing food security through partnerships with farmers in Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda. Israel will contribute expertise in irrigation, water technologies, agricultural […]
Israel Strengthens Environmental Ties to 44 African Nations
Israel now has relations with 44 African nations, more than at any time in the country’s history. “This is the dawning of a new era in relations between Israel and African states,” according to Lynn Schler, director of the Africa Centre at Ben-Gurion University. During summer 2012, a vast array of high-profile African leaders visited Israel, […]
juwi Wind and Solar Plant in Egypt is Remote-Controlled from Germany
German project developer juwi has installed their first combined wind and solar plant in Egypt to be used for desalinating and pumping irrigation water for farms and it is monitored and controlled remotely from Germany. Located halfway between the bustling cities of Cairo and Alexandria in Wadi El-Natrun, the new plant is comprised of four 12 […]
Israel’s Tent Protest Movement is Growing Roots in an Eco-Community
The Israeli government may not be taking them very seriously, but a small bucket of social activists who colonized Rothschild Avenue last summer with tents, pop-up massage parlors and peace-preaching posters have yet to give in to the country’s growing income disparity. Refusing to pay exorbitant prices for shoebox apartments amid the city’s concrete lanes […]