How Saudi Arabia Is Turning Desert into Huge Farmlands

this is saudi arabia 95 of the country is a scorching hot desert dunes and infertile land even though saudi arabia is one of those six countries that doesn't have any permanent rivers and has only four inches of rain a year it exports with vegetables fruits dairy products all around the world even in the 1990s saudi arabia was one of the largest wheat exporters in the world if we zoom in there is something interesting going on in this country there are a lot of huge circular greeneries spread out along the desert all across the country and even in the middle of the desert and these are farmlands more specifically center pivot irrigation farms the sheer magnitude of agricultural projects in saudi arabia has been huge for the perspective in 1961 it had 11 400 square kilometers of arable land comprising 0.5 percent of the country and in 2016 it has almost 35 000 square kilometers which is the triple the amount of fertile land as compared to 60 years ago 35 000 square kilometers is bigger area than the countries like belgium and armenia in the past 60 years saudi arabia have transformed 24 000 square kilometers of desert in fertile land into fertile soil for the perspective 24 000 square kilometers is a bigger area than the countries like slovenia and two times bigger than qatar and the question is how this desert country transformed big areas into fertile land and how with its 1.5 arable land can produce and let alone export agricultural products when most of us think of the middle east and saudi arabia we think of scorching sun endless oceans of sand dunes and one of the most inhospitable climates on earth but that wasn't the case in the not so distant past about 10 000 years ago and before it was a place of rolling grasslands forests and jungles watered by torrential monsoon rains just like in the tropical southeast asia water is the most central element in the greening of the area and you might be thinking how they got so much water to sustain large-scale farming while engineers tapped into ancient river channels now buried by the sand seeds the fossil waters were trapped in aquafires as deep as one kilometer below the ground and it was accumulated during the periods of weather climates in the places in glacier epochs between 10 000 and 2 million years ago saudi arabia sits on huge reserves of not only oil but water as well and it has been pumping water from the glacier lake eco fire to enable farming and milk production on a large scale generally irrigation of crops is important to maintain the abundance of food for growing population crop irrigation and farming requires large amounts of water and energy these are expensive and becoming less available therefore it's important for farmers to conserve water and energy when irrigating crops conserving water and energy requires good irrigation management methods so one of the best ways to manage water and energy is the center pivot irrigation method center pivot method was created by a farmer named frank zeibach in colorado and it is recognized as one of the most effective methods to improve water distribution to farm fields as the name suggests center pivot irrigate in a circular pattern around a central pivot point pivots are capable of applying water fertilizer chemicals and herbicides this versatility improves the efficiency of irrigation practices by using a single piece of machinery to perform several functions center pivot machines have been used in irrigation for decades in different countries and it increases yields and less water waste as compared to other irrigation methods like flood irrigation and saudi arabia has been building center pivot irrigation for 50 years now however they have nearly emptied what was an echo fire the size of a lake erie since arabian peninsula receives very low rainfall echo fires are not being replenished the prevailing winds are from the west and contain almost no moisture after traversing northern africa moreover the western side of saudi arabia is where the mountains are so to speak the arabian shield and most rains fall on the western slopes and flows back to the sea unused so saudi arabia is suffering from a major depletion of water in its echo fires and the risk of disintegration of its agriculture as a consequence to prevent this catastrophe saudi arabia has bought agricultural land in the united states argentina indonesia and a number of african countries and saudi arabia is ranked as a major buyer of agricultural land in foreign countries but there are some natural solutions to make desert into agricultural land as we highlighted how most of the rain falls on into the western slopes of the arabian peninsula there was an interesting experiment in the albedo area in the western saudi arabia and as we have talked in a video how african countries are building the great green wall to stop the certification and one of the main causes of fertile land becoming that and eventually desert is overgrazing by animals so historically there were pastoral nomadic bedouin tribes wronged in the albedo area because of urbanization and modernization the young tribes were obliged by law to settle in one area unavoidably the area was overgrazed and the once fertile land was nothing but rocky desert two royal saudi princesses visited the area saw the crisis and initiated a development project led by stanford university permaculturist neil speckman and harvard university bioethist mona hamdi for eight years spacman lived with bedouin communities building rock terraces and check dams and carving white shallow ditches in the land to trap rain water and create a stream they also built a bat house a pigeon house and planted drought-resistant trees to mimic nature the project run for about seven years and in 2016 funding was cut and then a two-year drought ravaged the region most of the trees died out and the whole project was in jeopardy but in 2018 in 2019 rain fell again and flow through the terraces and dams that two scientists helped to build after rainfall the whole area turned into rich savannah as compared to the desolate desert before the start of the project mountainside terraces trapped rain water and gave life to the soil now it's lush and green teeming with life albedo area is a geographic fractal meaning it follows the same pattern as all the region's watersheds the entire west coast of the arabian peninsula characterized watershots to 90 percent of all fresh water flows to the red sea in flooding events without trapping or using the water for example in the alith area a typical single flood event that flows to the sea is enough to irrigate 130 million trees for three years albeda project is a profound example on how to make a desert into a savannah thriving with life and greeneries by harvesting and managing flood water if this project can be magnified to the entire west coast of saudi arabia this whole region which is more than 30 million acres or 121 000 square kilometers could be transformed into agricultural land it's quite significant this area is bigger than the netherlands belgium switzerland and denmark combined it will cost billions of dollars and time but the agricultural capacity of saudi arabia could be multiplied by at least six times increasing the gdp by three to five percent an increase of rainfall in the region as we have talked about reversing desertification in africa by building giant green wall video the vast majority of carbon gases is in the fertile soil if the soil dries and becomes a desert carbon gases will be released to the atmosphere so in this case if the soil comes back to life it traps huge amounts of carbon gases back into the ground so it is a win-win situation saudi arabia uses desalination plants for fresh water for its population and as we have talked in desalinating seawater video desalinating seawater into fresh is energy intensive and it uses natural gas and coal in the process but modern desalination plants are mostly thermal which is coal and natural gas that emit carbon gases and the second method membrane-based reverse osmosis which runs with electricity coal and natural gas are not an option because of global warming but reverse osmosis is doable because electricity can be harnessed from nuclear energy and we have talked in our video how nuclear power is the cheapest and safest form of energy well if you want to learn about it more please check it out so in order to make the land green we need water to get water we need desalination plants for an efficient plant that doesn't emit carbon gases we need green energy so one of the best options powering this halal nation plant is with nuclear energy so it is all interconnected i have made a list of these videos in a chronological order please check it out and leave your thoughts in the comment section below thanks for watching and huge thanks to everybody who is supporting on patreon if you like this video hit the like button and subscribe and turn on the notification settings not to miss new videos i've been planning a quite a few videos for the next month and i hope you will like it well have a nice day

Channel: CuriousReason

Views: 3,830,000

Keywords: saudi arabia, agriculture, farming, regenerative agriculture, desertification, center pivot irrigation, center pivot irrigation how it works, center pivot irrigation system, desert farming in saudi arabia, desert farming

Id: ziGN8HXdj6U

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/RRDDSS]

Is this a MENA region accent or what?

[u/thesolitaire]

Followed the social media links, looks like he's from Uzbekistan.