For some, being a farmer is suicidal. Water and land are scarce, small farmers struggle to compete with the likes of Monsanto, and there are a host of environmental problems to contend with as well. In this context, it’s almost unthinkable that this bright young man dreams of following his father’s footsteps – as a farmer in Iran.
Egypt plans to lease 25,000 hectares of agricultural land to Arab investors. Agriculture minister Ayman Abu Hadid made the announcement in Tunis recently. Egypt is hoping that sustainable farmers will apply.
Turkey is floating plans to build a new “eco-city” in the southeastern corner of the country, near the border of Syria, and green building experts from Gaziantep want to use energy from burning pistachio shells to keep it running.
Israelis are renowned not only for their clean tech innovation, but also smart, savvy and water-efficient agriculture. This genius will be on display at the 2015 Milan Expo with a living pavilion designed by Knafo Klimor Architects.
For outsiders, SIWA oasis in Egypt is a wonderful place to visit precisely because “civilization” has been so slow to arrive there. But for locals, the gift of a new 20MW solar energy plant will be received like a mountain of gold.
Beyond the Mediterranean coastline, northern Morocco’s mountains are pocked with small scale dope farms. The government has tried hard to eradicate them, to little effect, but one governor sees green in the “illicit” plants.
A particularly virulent strain of stem rust that first struck Uganda’s wheat crops in1999 before it spread up into Sudan and Yemen, Ug99 might have met its match in a 5,000 year old weed.
Mexican farmers have been fighting drought with Solid Rain for more than a decade, but the powdered water designed by chemical engineer Sergio Jésus Rico Velasco only hit the American market last year. A highly absorbent substance with a potassium base, Solid Rain stores one liter of water in just 10 grams!
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.
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 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 […]