What do you do if you live in a cramped, workaholic country like Japan and still want to grow veggies in your precious, quality leisure time? This desire to be a weekend urban farmer is relevant for other locations too. Hydroponic farming projects are fast becoming popular everywhere, including Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.

Japan, in particular, has an acute land availability problem for people who cannot afford traditional weekend countryside retreats for gardening due to being confined to high-rise urban environments.

To help make gardening a reality for more city dwellers, a Japanese company Tanabatake Sukusuku now offers rental hydroponic growing containers on a monthly basis.

Opened in 2014 by Kajima Tatemono Sogo Kanri Co., a Tokyo based building and maintenance company, individuals and families can rent small hydroponic growing containers or “beds” and choose from 51 kinds of vegetable seeds; or bring their own.

“A cityscape becomes dark when the number of vacant buildings increases. Lights for gardening can illuminate the city, and I hope the greenery of the vegetables is like a downtown oasis and refreshes passers-by,” says Tsuneaki Ihana, who works in the company’s technical information section.

The rental space idea appears to be gaining popularity as more people are becoming involved. Staff advisors are on hand to assist with various aspects of hydroponic gardening, including humidity and temperature control and measuring the correct amount of fertilizer required.

American companies like flux are building the “brains” for hydroponic gardens and farms, to make it easy and hassle-free, and tell Green Prophet that multi-billion companies from Japan have contacted them to see how urban farming can go wide in Japan: Hydroponics can green city rooftops and grow high quality food for the discerning Japanese, but it’s also is a great hobby for Japan’s growing senior population. The government wants them engaged but they can’t bend over to tend to regular soil gardens. Hydroponic gardens can be raised on tables or built on walls on solve this problem.

One part-time gardener in Japan growing food this way said that it would be much harder to look after such a project if done from home and enjoys the flexibility community-style farming allows: “Here, I can casually enjoy farming when I have time,” she says.

Read more on urban and hydroponic agriculture:
Gaza produce on the menu at swanky American event in Jerusalem
Saving our food and planet requires bubbles
Khalifa hydroponic farms paying off

Photo of hydroponic lettuce farms by Pengertian Hodroponik

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Growing crops without soil, otherwise known as hydroponic agriculture, is not a recent innovation. In fact, it can be traced back to ancient times and kingdoms like Babylonia, whose Hanging Gardens were said to have been created and nurtured by use of hydroponics.

The modern day Middle East, especially water-deprived countries like Jordan and Syria, has had on-going problems in that local agriculture cannot provide sufficient amounts of local food due to lack of sufficient water and arable land to grow crops. Other resource-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates see hydroponics as the only solution for providing hyper local, fresh, nutritious food.

As a result of this water scarcity problem, Jordan sees potential in hydroponic agricultural projects, which are said to use as much as 90 percent less water over conventional soil-based agriculture.

The Kingdom of Jordan is seeing commercial opportunities for local hydroponic farming and is getting some help from the USAID Hydroponic Green Farming Initiative (HGFI). Hydroponic agricultural projects growing vegetables by both hydroponic and organic methods were the subject of an event held in May 2015, where US Ambassador to Jordan Alice Wells featured these vegetables in an event with Jordanian governmental officials and local producers.

The event was aimed at showing how use of hydroponic growing techniques not only saves water resources but produces high quality yields as well. Ambassador Wells told the participants:

“The future of hydroponic farming techniques is bright in Jordan. Hydroponic farming techniques are well-suited toward maximizing Jordan’s scarce supply of water. From my visits to hydroponic farms in the Jordan Valley, I’ve seen that the potential to grow more produce through hydroponic techniques is significant, given the minimal additional investment required to implement them.”

She added that hydroponic agriculture maximizes Jordan’s scarce water supplies. Her visits to hydroponic projects in the Jordan Valley indicate a good potential for this type of agriculture, with just a minimal additional investment required.

Chefs who attended the event were able to see the quality of the hydroponically-grown produce, which often uses no pesticides. Um Ali, who heads a woman’s agricultural cooperative in the north of Jordan, told the gathering that production of herbs like thyme is much better using hydroponic agriculture than by traditional soil methods:

“Our thyme production from hydroponic farming is far better than traditional soil farming. It uses much less water, which is scarce in Jordan. Our production is clean from soil diseases,” she said.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4gIkPSah6c[/youtube]

Building reliable markets for hydroponically-grown produce is equally important. The USAID program is designed to build greater awareness of the advantages of hydroponically-grown produce, and the chefs in attendance at the reception were able to experience first-hand the quality of produce from hydroponic fields. Developing strong domestic markets for produce will assist farmers in balancing the cyclical nature of produce grown for export.

Developing tools and an industry for hydroponics in the Middle East is just as important. Consider this super cool American company flux from New York powering up the entire industry by providing powerful monitors and controls for hydroponic farms, in the same way that Mobileye enables self-driving Tesla cars. The global market flux is tapping into will grow from about $19 billion today to $27 billion in 4 years. It’s a massive opportunity since there are few global players with no dominant, affordable solution for new businesses.

Jordan can and should be a part of that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHkYcgcRyFk

More about hydroponic agriculture in the Middle East:
Hydroponics in Qatar
Saudi Arabia’s OAXIS hydroponic food belt
Khalifa hydroponic farms paying off
Grow fresh food in the middle of Manhattan?
Hanging gardens of Babylon inspire water farming called hydroponics

The post Jordan hydroponics supported by USAID appeared first on Green Prophet.

Growing crops by hydroponic farming, or on water, has been practiced since the ancient Babylonians planted their legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. These were the world’s first vertical farms concept.

Hydroponic water gardens also include roof top gardens in Middle East cities like Beirut and Cairo as soon today/

In fact, the practice of hydroponic, water based farming for smart city farms is becoming so popular, that people living in urban environments can benefit from internet databases to obtain “how-to” information for turning their balconies, back yard terraces; and even spare rooms into flourishing hydroponic agricultural  wonders with the right equipment, nutrients and lighting.

Even a small terrace can produce good growth yields if there is adequate light and the proper nutrients.

Depending on how much you want to invest in your hydroponic water farm project and what type of plant or vegetable to grow there, you can start a hydroponic garden with a few pieces of plastic piping; or for those wishing to plant “secret gardens” requiring indoor lighting (for cannabis or similar plants) the equipment and work involved can be considerably more.

The actual growing process will need to formulate the right combination of water, lighting, oxygen and nutrients to enable proper plant growth and yields. There are plenty of guides on what is required; including a site called High Times (you figure out the meaning).

According to High Times, it’s important to use the best quality water. Using tap water that has a lot of impurities will “lock up” nutrients, creating deficient plants that yield poorly and are susceptible to diseases and pests. The chlorine in tapwater also kills off the beneficial microbial life that helps plant roots. This is also true for growing in soil as well.

Water used for hydroponic water farming can be purified successfully by using filtering systems like reverse osmosis  which involves a special membrane to filter out impurities. This is essentially the same reverse osmosis process that is used in desalination to create clean, fresh drinking water from seawater.

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Shmita is a Jewish way to let the land rest once every 7 years. For Jewish Israelis it’s a deeply spiritual practice. Some may be surprised to know that the significance of this commandment is deeply ecological too.

The biblically ordained shmita or Sabbath for the land is about to happen following the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah (or Jewish New Year) tomorrow. In other words shmita is the 7-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel.

I first started Green Prophet in 2007 during a Sabbatical year, and coming full circle the shmita year starts again. Shmita means “release”.

An academic Sabbatical, when professors take off to San Francisco for a year abroad, comes from the Jewish concept of the Sabbatical year when the land rests.

RELATED: The shmita year and connection to the environment

But when we talk about a rest for the land, the ecological points to this tradition are significant – mind-blowing, even, knowing that sages were proscribing and following the shmita tradition hundreds, and thousands of years ago.

In ancient times we can look to biblical text for the source of the shmita tradition, which is considered a mitzva or commandment to religious Jews: “Six years shall you sow your land and gather in its produce. But in the seventh year, you shall let it go and abandon it, and the needy of your people shall eat, and the wildlife of the field shall eat what is left; so shall you do to your vineyard and your olive grove.” (Exodus 23:10,11)

“>Maimonides, in his, “The Book of the Mitzvos,” discusses the above mitzvah, and writes: “By this injunction, we are given a mandate to renounce as ownerless all produce of the land in the Shmittah Year, and to permit anybody to take what grows in our fields.” (Mitzvah 134)

When the land belongs to no one

An outshoot of this mitzvah is to desist from cultivating the land during the seventh year.

Practically speaking, Jews living in the land of Israel sill practice shmita. According to the late Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen as his writings appear in the Hazon Archives: “During the Shmittah Year, the produce that grows naturally in the fields is considered to be ownerless. According to our tradition, the rabbinical courts can hire workers to gather this produce and distribute it to the public.

“For example, there are rabbinical courts in Israel today which hire workers – the farmers themselves – to gather the produce, and it is then distributed to the public for a low fee which covers the costs of the gathering and distribution.”

Laws for observing shmita are complicated and since I am not a rabbi I will not go into them in detail. But essentially there are some kinds of allowances for fruit and produce that may be consumed while the land owned by the Jewish farmers is left to go fallow.

I understand that new seeds may not be planted, but trees can be cared for so the orchard or vineyard is not lost. We’ll go into more detail later.

Ripe peppers rotting in a greenhouse during shmita year in Israel are seen below.

But what will people eat during shmita?

In our world where tomatoes routinely take transatlantic flights it is not hard for Israelis to obtain food from elsewhere. And I should note that this particular mitzvah applies only to the land of Israel. Jews living in other countries do not observe this commandment.

When it’s too late to freeze ahead for the year and when you can’t rely on preserves, fruits and vegetables sold in a shmita year however may be derived from five sources, according to Wikipedia.

They are:

1. Produce grown during the sixth year, to which the laws of the seventh year do not apply.
2. Produce grown on land owned by non-Jewish (typically, Arab) farmers in Israel.
3. Produce grown on land outside the halakhic boundaries of Israel (chutz la’aretz). A large number of greenhouses have been set up in Jordan this year to grow produce for Israel’s observant folks.
4. Produce (mainly fruits) distributed through the otzar beit din (I have no idea what this means)
5. Produce grown in greenhouses.

This last way of growing (#5) resonates with eco-minded folks. I know of religious Jews in Israel who have started buying hydroponic and aquaponic systems to fulfil this year’s mitzvah of shmita, while allowing them to grow their own food at home.

Hydroponics, which I am trying at home is a great way to maintain a steady supply of greens like lettuce, and organic herbs. My na’ana (or mint) plants are growing like weeds laying down roots throughout my whole system.

Hydroponics is acceptable shmita practice according to orthodox rabbis

According to the Torah scholar Mordechai Schon in Israel hydroponics is acceptable, but there may be some conditions that apply. He tells Green Prophet:

“Growing vegetables using systems like hydroponics for shmita were introduced many years ago. There is a book that was published in 1950 named Hydroponics in Israel by Dr. Meir Schwartz הידרופוניקס – גידולי חצץ. בהוצאת המכון לחקר החקלאות ע”פ התורה on this subject.

“M Swartz did extensive research to test the viability of it; to be able to grow vegetables in the shmita year; and was guided by the Chazon Ish [Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz – left] who also helped him raise funds for his research,” says Schon.

“There are authorities that permitted hydroponics even growing outside; but the Chazon Ish (left) permitted only if growing indoors [if there is a roof or covering which prevents rain and sunlight it is considered indoors].”

Food tips during shmita

Practically speaking and for people observing the mitzvah of shmita, I asked Schon how people truly classify and source their food, according to Jewish law. Let’s say what happens if you have a small food garden at home?

Schon writes: “Fruits, shishis, fruits from sixth year which includes all fruit that started growing before shmita as it is not considered shmita fruit. If it started growing after Rosh Hashanah it has kadushas shviis and may be eaten. It could be sold through otzar beis din.

“The other option is import.”

Schon continues: “Vegetables that were picked after Rosh Hashanah but started growing before Rosh Hashannah may be eaten but have kdushat shviis and could be sold through otzar beis din. [There are more stringent opinions that prohibit vegetables that were picked after Rosh Hashanah as that is the opinion of the Rambam; but the Chazon Ish was lenient on this].

“Vegetables that started growing after Rosh Hashanah is prohibited. Vegetables that were grown by non-Jews on their land is permitted [there are different opinions if there is kdushas shviis] the other option is import or from crops that were grown in many parts of the south in the Aravah where shmita does not apply, since it is considered halachically chutz laaretz (or outside the land of Israel).

“Also some vegetables [mainly potatoes are stored from the sixth year],” Schon concludes.

If you are observant and have more questions add them to the comments here and I will ask Schon, willing to help, to reply in this article.

So to sum up, the shmita is a way to let the land rest for a year. It sure sounds a little complicated for the Jewish consumer looking to make a salad, but there is sound ecological reasons for shmita so the land can be replenished. But also, there are spiritual ones that I see as well. Whenever we remind ourselves that this land, any land on earth, does not really belong to us, but is borrowed, we give it more reverence and respect.

If in doubt about shmita, ask your rabbi. Peace out everyone observing shmita and peace out planet earth!

Top two images: ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com

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Urban farming in Egypt has soared. Read about Schaduf – a soilless solution taking root in Maadi.

Two Egyptian brothers have received enough donations to set up three rooftop farms in Maadi – a once wealthy suburb of Cairo. Due for full installation by April, these won’t be any old farms. Sherif and Tarek Hosny have developed closed-loop, vertical hydroponic systems that use recycled water and mineral nutrient solutions to grow cheaper, healthier produce.

Designed to become a secondary source of income for poor families living in the less-privileged areas of Maadi, where many expatriates and wealthy Egyptians seek shelter from Cairo’s bustling urban center, Schaduf’s farms have great potential to scrub the neighborhood’s polluted air and give struggling families a much-need fiscal boost.

A healthy supplemental income

Sherif Hosny is an engineer who quit his job in Dubai to work on an organic farm in the United States. He told Egypt Independent that he became taken with farming  and decided to return to his home country with his new-found learning.

Through Schaduf, which name refers to a weighted pole device that is used to lift heavy buckets of water, the Hosny brothers hope to uplift families that live below the poverty line. They are well on their way to achieving this goal.

Already they have received enough donations to build three rooftop systems that cost up to $2,500 – an amount of money that poor families could never produce. Schaduf has implemented a scheme that allows them to provide the hydroponic system and training upfront, for which new part-time urban farmers should be able to pay within a year by selling their produce.

Not only does the system support a new generation of urban farmers, but the supplies used to create the systems all come from local manufacturers, which further fosters a proudly-Egyptian economy.

Supporting the local economy

Egypt Independent reports:

All of the products used from the wooden frames, the perelite (a soil conditioner), the peat moss to the tarps are locally manufactured. Schaduf has already received enough donations to set up three rooftop farms and is working with local NGOs to find families who are interested and have the appropriate amount of space.

In addition to the rooftop hydroponics farm, the Hosny brothers are testing an “aquaponic” systems that combines principles of aquaculture and hydroponics. Although they have managed to raise Tilapia fairly successfully, the fish die off during unusually cold weather, so Schaduf is testing various low-tech solutions that will maintain warmth in the rooftop fish tanks.

Critics worry that Egypt’s pollution will compromise the quality of produce grown on Maadi rooftops, but Sherif dismisses these claims.

“Trees in the neighborhood may filter out some of the pollution sediments before they reach roofs, and the plants create CO2, pulling pollution out of the air,” he told Egypt Independent, adding that if rooftop gardens “could have a big impact on Cairo air.”

:: Egypt Independent

More on urban farming solutions in Egypt:

Egyptian Organic Farm Declared Sustainability World Leader

What Urban Rooftop Gardening Could do for the Middle East
Egypt’s Urban Agriculture Movement is Growing

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