{"id":50761,"date":"2018-07-06T14:29:15","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T18:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/?p=50761"},"modified":"2018-08-28T15:47:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T19:47:20","slug":"growing-barley-in-the-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/blog\/2018\/07\/growing-barley-in-the-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Barley in the Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nadir Iddir, El Watan<\/a>, Algeria<\/em><\/p>\n

When considering the need to develop agriculture in the world, to grow food for animals or people, the Sahara Desert is certainly not the first location that comes to mind. But it\u2019s precisely here that such an activity is perhaps the most necessary. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the prevalence of undernourishment in Africa rose from 20.8 percent in 2015 to 22.7 percent in 2016, affecting 224 million people on the continent. In the refugee camps of Western Sahara, which shelter more than 173,000 people who fled the disputed territory 35 years ago, the figures are more alarming: the malnutrition rate is as high as 40 percent, affecting mostly children, according to the Red Crescent.<\/p>\n

Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ World Food Program (WFP) has sought to tackle this issue by setting up fodder production units in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, southwestern Algeria. These units rely on hydroponic agriculture, which means the plants are grown on a material that\u2019s naturally inert, such as sand. The technique requires no fertilizer and enables the production of fresh fodder for animals in desert regions or areas where the soil quality is too low for agriculture. Only water is needed.<\/p>\n

It was a Sahrawi engineer, Taleb Brahim, who came up with the idea, and it was quickly adopted by the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ\u2019s food aid agency, which provided the necessary funds to launch the initiative. Three hundred families living in the refugee camps are now beneficiaries of the project. Brahim himself is a resident of the camps. He presented his idea, named \u201cGrowing in the desert,\u201d at the WFP Innovation Accelerator<\/a> boot camp in Munich in 2017, where it was selected as the jury\u2019s first choice.<\/p>\n

Using trays of local barley, the Sahrawi families who benefit from the program grow plants that, one week later, can be used to feed their livestock. To protect them from the heat, the trays are kept in containers, in greenhouses or in mud-brick constructions. The positive effects on the livestock are unmistakable: an improvement in milk production in terms of both quantity and quality, and a drastically reduced mortality rate of goat kids, according to a report by the United Nations in Algeria.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Couresty of: Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ World Food Programme<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe WFP wants to improve the food security of households and ensure they have better access to meat and goat\u2019s milk. We also aim to give them opportunities for job creation,\u201d Romain Sirois, WFP Representative in Algeria, said. The organization, which has signed a contract with the Algerian company Agro Solution, ordered the installation of units consisting of stacks of trays (containerized units), in addition to units made on site, in order to produce fodder in large quantities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe containerized unit can produce up to 100 kilograms of green fodder per day, which is enough to feed around 20 goats, while the locally-made unit produces 60 kilograms,\u201d Sirois explained. Around 50 smaller units, each capable of producing up to 15 kg of fodder per day (sufficient for five goats), were distributed to families during the pilot phase of the program, in partnership with the NGO Oxfam in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was given a small unit that\u2019s adequate for my five goats \u2013 a few trays and some barley \u2013 and some training. After about a week or 10 days, enough fodder grows and my goats are now healthier,\u201d one of the Sahrawi women beneficiaries of the program said.<\/p>\n

Agro Solution is currently producing another 170 units, which should be operational by September. \u201cBy the end of this expansion phase, we should be reaching 220 families. But with a population of 173,600 refugees in five camps, there\u2019s potential to further develop the project,\u201d Sirois said. He explained that additional funding is required to carry out the entire expansion of the program \u2013 each family-sized unit costs USD 250 and each containerized unit costs USD 25,000.<\/p>\n

Among the donations the WFP has received to fund the project are those made by the German government, via the Munich Innovation Center, and the Canadian Embassy in Algiers. A large contribution from the United States will enable the next phase of the program to be launched.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have managed to reduce costs, all the while maintaining a good level of production. We\u2019re currently in discussion with Agro Solution about producing [family-sized] units that would be even cheaper, at 150 dollars per unit,\u201d Sirois said. The project, which has the support of the Sahrawi people, might soon be reproduced in some Sahel countries. \u201cWe received a visit from a representative of Chad, and Oxfam is holding talks to replicate the initiative in Mali and Niger. It\u2019s very significant for us \u2013 we are using our experience to enable other communities to benefit from the same technology,\u201d the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ representative said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This article was written for Impact Journalism Day\u00a02018,\u00a0a\u00a0collaborative programme initiated by Sparknews<\/a> gathering\u00a0over 50 prestigious media outlets worldwide whose combined readership reach out to 100 million readers. On Impact Journalism Day (16 June), these outlets published stories about innovative solutions that help achieve the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Sustainable Development Goals.\u00a0Discover all Impact Journalism Day stories at\u00a0http:\/\/impactjournalismday.com\/read-our-stories\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nadir Iddir, El Watan, Algeria When considering the need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[7574],"class_list":["post-50761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainable-consumption-and-production","tag-hlpf-2018-success-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}