Greening the Desert II

[Music] so we went in had a look and we thought oh no this is like this is the end of the Earth this is like as hard as you can get this is hyperarid and it's 10 acres of almost dead flat completely salted landscape 400 M below sea level the lowest place on Earth 2 km from the Dead Sea right to about 2 km where Jesus was christened hardly got any rainfall we've got temperatures in August that go over 50° everybody's farming under plastic strips everybody's spray spray spray everybody's putting synthetic fertilizer on overgrows with goats just like maggots eating the flesh off the bone down to the bones of the country literally like maggots giant maggots eating it to nothing so we designed up a system that would have harest every single bit of rain water that fell on it on 10 acres there's 1 and 1/2 km of Swale water harvesting ditch on contour and when they're full 1 million lers of water soak into the landscape and they'll fill quite a few times over a winter and then we heavily mulched those swells with organic matter which was trash from organic fields nearby and we put that almost half a meter deep so we saved that and mulch our swrs which are about 2 m wide and half a meter deep on the trench then we put micro irrigation underneath the mulch and then on the uphill side of the water harvesting trench we put Nitro fix in very Hardy Pioneer desert trees which help shade and reduce window evaporation and also put nitrogen into the into the soil and structure the soil for us and then on the lower side of the trench we put uh fruit trees majoring in date palms as the longterm story in the end and then we put in figs uh pomegranates guavas mules now some Citrus within 4 months we had figs a meter high with figs on which is impossible we' done a course male and female course trained up some locals and we got a translator who's working for the project he had his degree in agriculture in the Jordan University and he got on to his mates and said in the agricultural Department well you said we couldn't grow figs we got figs growing and we got figs on them you better come and test the soil because no matter what you say we're either growing in salty soil what we shouldn't be growing or we've desalted the soil and we like to know what we've done um they came in and the salt levels were dropping so they became interested the salt levels are dropping around the swrs they said you must have washed it through see normally put huge amount of water on and wash the salt through to the lower levels which just makes the ground water more salty in the end you'll salt at 20 m deep if you keep doing that and then it will take a thousand years to recover and we used only 1/5 the amount of water so the water they thought we'd washed it all through no we'd used 1/ fifth that really got them when they realized how much water we hadn't used we with the same amount of water normally Ed on that much area we could have done 50 acres originally people laughed at us because we didn't put straight lines in we went on Contour with these sres they thought why don't you put it you got a bulldozer you can flatten the desert you can straighten so we want to go on Contour cuz you got longer Edge and we harvest the water passively then we planted more non-fr and trees than we did fruit trees so they laughed at us this is what planting unproductive things more than productive things what's the point you know in in soil that won't even grow anything so you know and then and then we covered all the inside of the swell with huge amount of mulch where they scraped all their organic matter off and burn it like most traditional agriculture in the middle of window we got a funny email saying we got a problem we've got mushrooms growing in the swell well they called it fungus but when we saw a photograph of it was mushrooms cuz they' never seen mushrooms cuz they never had that much humidity in living history in the soil and when you open up the mulch there's all these little animals there you know there little insects and the soil has come alive and the fungi net that's underneath the mulch is putting off a waxy substance which is repelling the salt away from the area and the decomposition is locking the salt up and the salt is not gone it's become iner and insoluble so we could we could GRE regreen the Middle East we could regreen any Desert and we could desalt it at the same time and and and if we can do it on an insignificant flat little bit of 10 acres of flat de desert if you give us something with catchment or a Wy or you know Canyon or any of those erosion gallies we can turn it right around completely you can fix all the world's problems in a garden you can you can solve them all in a garden you can solve all your pollution problems and all your supply line needs in the garden now most people actually today don't actually know that and and that makes most people very [Music] insecure so these examples have to be set so that the world can can have a positive future but we have to explain that unless this soil management is fully demonstrated extended and enhanced then we don't have any future the world's just going to turn to [Music] dust [Music] for [Music] [Music] all [Music] [Music] mam [Music] all [Music] [Music] yeah [Applause] ised ahed ahed ahed [Music] distribution I'm the foreign spee foreign speech foreign [Music] [Applause] s i set off there little bit more don't object they never object so far know but he probably doesn't [Music] need [Applause] what [Music] here we are in the Dead Sea Valley in a arid desert landscape of Jordan just behind me is the Green in the desert project site as it's known and in the background is Palestine we're not far from the Jordan River just a few kilometers from the baptism site got better intents camels donkeys goats sheep BN pigeons even chickens and poultry and Ducks the soil's absolutely degraded complete deforestation it's just like a a powder overg grazed overworked and absolutely unproductive the project site has demonstrated its capabilities but it's not quite the perfect scenario and that's what we're going to go and have a look at right [Music] now here we are at the renowned Green in the desert site in Jordan in the Dead Sea Valley um this property we originally became involved in in 20 000 the year 2000 and we were part of the design consultancy management advisory team for 3 years and this pro project and property went into a uh a sustainable development where it created its own soil and went into production after 3 years the funding stopped and it's had no serious management for 6 years yet The Perennial system continues to extend and although there's not a full understanding of the system there's an appreciation that the system continues on its [Music] own in the trenches of the soil where the swell Mounds form the trench uphill the soil Creations continued even without design management the design itself has continued to create good dark humus rich soil we're at the end of the dry season so this is when this landscape and this climate is most stressed yet here we have humus that's got a little bit of moisture in it it's thick with mulch it's a great system to grow in this is soil creation B ecosystemic overstory producing its own organic humus its own diverse humus there's mixtures of manure in here that inevitably just fall into the Swell this we can enhance and this we can create into a sustainable produ itive system that will go on indefinitely domestic pigeons almost an essential part of productive systems in the desert they fly in Freely available nutrient one of the highest sources of manure for compost and garden fertility take very little inputs hardly any input at all and this really high grade manure a fantastic domestic animal of desert system here we are in a ideal size crop field which if manag properly with the perennial system that is surrounding the field and has the potential to fertilize it and add organic matter this crop field could be producing continuously with a growing fertility instead with a bit of mismanagement inappropriate grazing and controlling of goats which could be an asset to the system because there's plenty of food for goats here but they have to be in control and the use of organic matter to fertilizer Sal and not burn here is a burn pile and there's multiple burn piles around the property careful bement for long enough so that the people locally can see what is possible these drip lines are going up and downhill where originally our first crop Fields here were all on Contour in fact there is a pattern of some of the Contour trenches left over from the original onion crop which we put in in mulched Contour trenches this is quite simple to actually arrange so that it becomes an accumulating fertility that continues to increase in potential here we are on conventional Mis mismanaged soil this field as you can hear for the birds all around us is surrounded by perennial support species and could be manage sustainably with good organic inputs for free but instead the saw has been conventionally Cloud it's just turning back to dust some parts of it are just dust and other parts of it are just big [Music] lumps hopefully we can get back into managing sites like this for a little bit longer with a few more test case successes that can then be repeated but it's a matter of managing our own sites with our own NOS with our own systems that we are in control of that is why we have the Green in the desert sequel that we're going to take you to and explain that we are in control of it and nobody else can tell us how to mismanage or inappropriately manage or inappropriate time cycle nutrient flows foreign speech speech [Music] spee [Music] spee here we are at grin in the desert the sequel and uh this is our demonstration site that we've funded we're in control of and we will continue to fund with education and run this as a master plan project for the Permaculture Research Institute of Jordan for the people of Jordan and we have already established trees here and we have olives and pomegranates and guavas and some Citrus date palms multiple leum trees we're building infrastructure right now we've got a shower toilet block under construction and a course being Tau the first course so there's funding already coming in this will be an ongoing project this will be a benefit to the permaculture movement globally as a model and this will be a benefit to the local people of dordan in the Middle East [Music] God and for [Music] in [Music] foreign speee spe spe for [Music] [Music] fore [Music] for [Music] fore you wouldn't think this was a good starting point for a garden pretty Rocky pretty poor soil 7 years ago that's exactly what that looked like and now it's an abundant food forest with a whole mixture of species and it's built its own soil in just 7 years with an overstory now of luina and poopus giving us that lovely filtered shade we have olives carab pomegranate guava bananas apricot and grapes as a trellis Ibraham here took the first course I taught in 2001 he planted this Forest immediately and he got his diploma in 2004 so now we have a fully established system with a fully established permaculture designer and [Music] consultant [Music] [Music] as you know as everyone know that Jordan is a Water deived Country it's the most water deprived country in the world so most of uh we are consuming more than more than 12% of our uh renewable Water Resource uh 97% of the Jordanian is receiving less than 200 mm rainfall the other thing is the desert area is the the evaporation is 9,000 per of the precipitation while in the Highland it's 450% of the evaporation of the precipitation so it's I mean the grain P that we get it's completely evaporated this is one thing also if we demonstrate a water harvesting on top of the ground in the surface it will be disappeared soon very fast so the only technique that suitable for Jordan is store the harvested drain fold under the ground to prevent to minimize the evaporation come on me let com I have been traveling uh around the world for the last 6 years with Jeff and I'm being bu in like a different permac culture project around the around the world and I understand from all that traveling if the people need a good design and a good system to put together to hold people the way they live and uh because it's my idea when I travel and I see the how the way people took permac culture so strongly in different country and help them for the way they live I come back here and I say I I think we could do it anyway and especially after the Green in the desert and is worked here and and been for uh 8 to 10 years now in working and we saw uh the result of it and how could help people and that's where I come from is make a group and work with women and men and put Society like and and then have a new uh a permac culture Jordan [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] here we are the PDC the permaculture design certificate course is finished the first one in Jordan for us on the new project site we're here planting trees extending the the design and the example building soil processes extending the project demonstration site our students have left theyve gone back all over the world the great distances China Singapore Italy Spain England even Australia here in the Middle East students have left to go to Egypt and set up project sites under the master plan Palestine turkey Bulgaria Syria Afghanistan all these places potentially setting up under the master plan demonst ation sites and education centers modeled on our example themed on soil fertility with productivity a very important link for food security worldwide that we have to realize is a design imperative that we get right for the Abundant future that we have to aim for this is the world of permaculture this is what we have to do to solve the world major crisis problems that we have supplier resources are needed local resources in a sustainable way this is the world of permaculture this is what we have to do we're getting on with it come and join us this is the future if you if you have all [Music] this [Music] [Music] Allah s [Music] [Music] mam alikum good evening good evening Salam good evening

Channel: Permaculturenews

Views: 313,725

Keywords: Greening, Desert (Geographical Feature Category), Geoff Lawton (Academic), Jordan (Country), Permaculture (Website Category)

Id: 9VGHoxpYlWQ

Length: 36min 33sec (2193 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2015