Bismillah, alhamdulillah.
The Arab news gave extensive coverage to a conference on water resource management held in Saudi Arabia yesterday. The price of water is scheduled to go up. This is in light of the recent decision by the Saudi authorities to stop farming that is being done in the country which has been a very water inefficient process. As I was reading this the statistic that stuck in my mind was the predicted population explosion. The current population of Saudi Citizens is 20 million or thereabouts and is predicted to rise to current Egyptian levels of 80-100 million by 2060.
This potentially back breaking and war instigating demand on the provision of water to the citizens of Saudi Arabia and the greater Middle East is something that is exercising the minds of many in this area who realise the potential of the problem. This was one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia abandoned its water rich and crop poor desert greenification attempts. If you drive from Riyadh to Dammam you can see the industrial attempt to greenify the desert, with industrial scale piping being used to irrigate circular patches of green. You can even see the patches of green on Google Earth as shown in the embed below (the round circles)
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No matter how rich you are you have to look at both the inputs and outputs. While Saudi is currently oil rich and can afford desalination a rapidly growing population implies it has to look at the outputs much more carefully and reduce water demand in the long term. Indeed this is the prophetic teaching of Muhammad (S) who is reported in a weak hadith to have advised a Companin who was doing his abltions that he should not waste water even if he is next to a river.
So can Saudi grow its food in an alternate way?
According to Professor Dickson Despommier the answer is yes. He was being interviewed by NPR radio yesterday and was advocating the use of hydroponics to grow crops. His key points were as follows:
- Hydroponics is the science of growing crops without soil.
- This is something that happens in nature and the technology to grow such crops is well established.
- Hydroponics farms can be built in multi story buildings hence the term ‘vertical farms’
- Abandoned multistory buildings can be given a new lease of life.
- In sunshine rich countries the sun light can be transmitted via mirrors or even fibre optic cables to each plant!
- The crops and the ruit produced are indistinguishable from soil grown crops.
- The technique uses 70-80% less water than soil grown crops.
- The water can even be recycled.
- He is currently speaking to the Qatari government in the Middle East amongst others in the world to bring this idea to them.
Saudi and other nations in a similar predicament should give this technique further thought and analysis.
Filed under: Saudi Arabia, World Affairs, hydroponics, Professor Dickson Despommier and hydroponics, Saudi farming, Saudi population explosion, Saudi water problem, soil is not needed for crop growth
