The Cooperative spirit which comes so hard to independent ranchers in the U.S. and Australia was never a question in Israel. The Jewish people knew a joint effort would be the only way to carve a life out of the desert.
Reclaiming the Desert has long been a national, and even international, obsession for Israel. In the early 1900s, the Jewish National Fund had begun buying back pieces of thier acient homeland.
Jewish pioneers and refugees from all over the world came to carve a new life on Kibbutzim, or collective farms, in the barren landscape. One of those was Yoel De Malach, who came to palestine in 1943 at the age of 15.
He and his fellow pioneers literally stated from scratch, and learned to survive in the sand the hard way--by trail and error.
Yoel De Malach is credited with a Major Break through: The adaptation of plant species to brackish, or saline water. Jewish settlers tapped into this water supply by drilling wells deep under the desert.
The Israelis were also early pioneers in drip irrigation. Its slow, near continuous watering has replaced flood or sprinkler irrigation in many arid regions of the world. Because water is delivered to the roots, very little is lost through evaporation. With proper technique, plants can thrive even on saline or brackish water--If you know the secret.
Reservoirs are being constructed to store the purified waste water and capture winter floodwaters for use during the dry months. This project is on the Besor River. Reservoir water is stored and used for agriculture. Today, flowers are Israel's principal export crop. Israel also supplies much of Europe with produce
in the off-season, when the fruits and vegetables bring premium prices.
The story of Israel's desert savannah and the technology that they imploy is one of the many stories documented in Suvivors in the Sand, a video tracking human adaptation in the desert.
College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
New Mexico State University
phone: (505) 646-2701
e-mail: aaccount@nmsu.edu price: $24.95 plus shipping and handling Funded in part by the International Arid Lands Consortium
