A Desert In Bloom

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 5

A Desert In Bloom

(By JOSEPHINE RIPLEY in the "Christian Science Monitor’’) JN Israel in the hot wasteland of the Negev Desert, the visitor comes upon an unbelievable mirage. Yes, he’s “seeing things” g r o w i n g things. Fields of grain, trees bearing fruit, rows of green vegetables like strips across the sand. Even beds of flowers.

Here in the midst of a barren nowhere there’s a new-old-kind of farming. It’s farming not done with “mirrors,” but with the aid of electronic computers. Not that computers should be given all the credit for this amazing experiment

which has already excited world-wide attention.

The credit goes to the Nabatean farmers who worked these very lands—this very farm at Avdat—some 2000 years ago. It was they who left their buried secrets for the modern agriculturists of Israel to discover—and copy. Excavations of these ancient farms disclosed an ingenious system by which the infrequent rainfall of the area was quickly diverted from the hillsides, through ditches, down to the terraced gardens below. Their garden walls were buttressed with stone walls to hold the moisture deep in the soil. Simple, efficient. The only difference today is that the farmer counts the garnered raindrops with computers instead of on his fingers or by guess-work. Research These desert experiments are being carried out at Avdat, and ancient hilltop town, and at Shivta. Both were flourishing Nabatean cities some 20 centuries or more ago. In charge of this latter-day desert cultivation is Professor Michael Evenari, a botanist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Working with him in the experiments are Leslie Shanan, a consulting water engineer, and Naphtali H. Tadmor, of the National University Institute of Agriculture. Back in Tel Aviv, Mr Shanan told of this search for desert farming secrets which began 12 years ago. By air photographs they traced the ruins of ancient towns on the desert below. “As we explored on the scene, we found that each farm had its own houses. So we knew these farmers were not nomads; they lived here,” he related with obvious enjoyment in the reminiscence. "We found evidence of ditches running to the fields. Sometimes the ditch ran into underground cisterns and sometimes Into pipes.” Some of the cisterns dated back to the days of Judean

kings, according to archaeologists in the expedition. Many existed at least 600 8.C., the oldest found predated 800 B.C. Many were deep enough in the earth to indicate that “the stored rainfall must have lasted through the year.” The ancients did, indeed, know how to water the desert, the explorers conclude. Irrigation All the 20th century newcomers did was to bring In modern instruments—computers and gauges—to record the amount of water coming down into the farm, the depth of its penetration of the soil, and to record more precisely how each plant or tree utilises this metered water supply. This system of water diversion is known as “run-off farming.” Some refer to it as “farming without irrigation,” but Mr Shanan and others claims this is not accurate. Irrigation is involved, although it is not the modern irrigation used in Israel's green acres in the north. The two experimental farms have been in actual operation four years. Computers and gauges show that it requires 20 acres of hillside run-off to produce the surface water required for one acre below. Water Surplus “We know that over a period of four or five years this ratio is sufficient—even in a drought year—to collect all the water necessary to supply any crop we have established," Mr Shanan reports. “We have raised peaches, apricots, almonds, artichokes, range grasses, grains, olives, and other products. We have had two good years and two dry years. "In good years,” he said, “there is even a surplus of water that we don't know what to do with.” The average yearly rainfall in the area is four inches. Last year there was less than one inch. The biggest rainfall since the farms were established was six inches.