Ibrahim Abouleish grew up in a Cairo neighborhood in the 1940s and 1950s where many Jewish families lived, attended a Christian school, and became deeply attached to his Muslim faith at an early age. He attended university in Austria where he obtained a medical degree as well as training in research chemistry. After completing his studies, he embarked on a successful career in pharmacological research in Austria, married an Austrian, and started a family. He took a special interest in the study of philosophy, especially the works of Rudolph Steiner, which he used to read and interpret the Koran in what he considered to be a spiritually more insightful fashion. Dr. Abouleish enjoyed and admired European culture but remained a committed Muslim throughout his life. Unlike many other Egyptians, Dr. Abouleish expressed opposition to war with Israel in the 1960s.
Although he returned to Egypt frequently to visit his family, Dr. Abouleish did not travel extensively in the country until 1975 when he took an eye-opening trip with an Austrian friend. He was shocked by the catastrophic degradation of agriculture in the Nile Valley and the physical decline of Cairo and its living conditions. Construction of the Aswan High Dam in his eyes was an unmitigated disaster by halting the age-old annual flooding of the Nile that covered fields with life-giving fertile mud. Farmers were forced to compensate for this loss of fertility by applying large amounts of fertilizer which led to excessive salting and soil compression.
On his return to Austria, Dr. Abolish further investigated and pondered what had happened to Egypt and began to seek alternatives to the continued degradation of the rural landscape. He became especially interested in biodynamic agriculture, a type organic farming developed by students of Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy. This form of farming had been successfully applied for decades in Europe, especially in Italy. After traveling and learning about biodynamic methods, Dr. Abouleish set aside his research career and, with his wife and children, moved back to Egypt in 1977 to establish an organic farm. The farm became the focal point for the SEKEM initiative, the name of which was adapted from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics for the life-giving vitality of the sun.
SEKEM, headquartered at the original farm site north of Cairo, includes five different companies that employ 1,800 people and produce and distribute a variety of organic products including natural medicines, cereals, rice, vegetables, pasta, honey, jams, dates, spices, herbs, edible oils, herbal teas, juices, coffee, milk, eggs, beef, sheep, chicken, seeds, and organic cotton textiles and clothing. One company, ISIS, distributes more than 80 percent of the herbal teas sold in Egypt. SEKEM currently operates five farms on reclaimed desert lands that provide almost a third of the company’s organic raw materials and has created permanent “Fair Trade” ties with small farmers for the rest. SEKEM’s secret weapon in desert reclamation is compost, a product it both uses itself and sells to other farmers. Compost rich soil in deserts increases fertility and productivity, retains much more water than conventional farm soil (essential in an arid climate), and sequesters substantial amount of carbon in its accumulated organic matter. As a result of its aerobic composting operation, SEKEM is awarded carbon credits which it can sell in the European carbon allowance market.
While SEKEM is a profitable venture, its goals and activities extend well beyond those of a conventional business. SEKEM has successfully advanced its founding vision of creating ecologically sustainable oases in the desert where health-giving organic goods can be grown in a manner protective of both the local and global environment. In and around these oases, SEKEM seeks to create communities where individuals can not only improve their material condition, but expand their educational and culture capabilities as well. In all its efforts, SEKEM adheres to strict standards for the protection of human rights (including religious freedom), achievement of gender equity, and educational and cultural advancement as well as rigorous targets for environmental sustainability including carbon emissions reduction.
Through its Development Foundation, SEKEM established a school located on its headquarters farm serving 300 kindergarten, primary, and secondary students. The students come from a diversity of social backgrounds, including both Muslims and Christians, and the school emphasizes respect for all religions and contains both a mosque and chapel. In addition to following the Egyptian state curriculum, the school makes a special effort to provide courses in crafts, drama, dance, and music. SEKEM has its own orchestra that performs in the local community and gives special support to the practice of Eurythmy, a dance form originating in Europe.The Foundation has also established a modern medical center nearby that serves 120 patients or more a day from employee families and the local community. The clinic offers a variety of outreach programs that address such issues as women’s health, family planning, and sanitation. In addition to these efforts, the Foundation also offers vocational training and education in organic methods. The SEKEM Academy located near Cairo undertakes applied research in agriculture and pharmaceuticals and helped to create the Heliopolis University which just recently opened and is offering degrees in pharmacy, engineering, and business. All students will take a set of core courses using a holistic approach to education focusing on culture, the environment, globalism, and the full development of personal abilities. In sum, SEKEM in its short lifetime has created an impressive set of institutions with a visionary hope for realizing sustainable social and economic progress in the Egyptian countryside. How such a social invention occurred is a fascinating tale worthy of our attention.
Starting up something so unusual as an organic farm in an autocratic country dominated by the military and run by centralized bureaucracies proved to be a demanding and frustrating task. One day bulldozers and soldiers arrived on the SEKEM farm and started pulling down three-year old trees to clear the land. A local general had decided to turn the farm into a military area to take advantage of a water supply from wells dug for crops, and the intrusion was brought to a halt only because Dr. Abouleish was friends with President Sadat and could ask for his help.
One of the biggest challenges to SEKEM arose from pesticide spraying on neighboring cotton fields spilling over onto the farm’s medicinal herbs and other organic crops, threatening the company’s certification as a biodynamic producer. Fearing a collapse in the cotton crop, the Egyptian government refused to curtail pesticide spraying. SEKEM set out to prove on test plots that organic methods to control pests can be just as effective and no more costly than conventional pesticide applications. After several years of testing, SEKEM demonstrated the effectiveness of organic methods, and pesticide use was eventually halted on all of Egyptian cotton fields. As a reward for its efforts, SEKEM successfully entered the organic cotton business.
Egyptian pesticide companies of course were unhappy about the loss of a lucrative market caused by SEKEM and began a campaign to generate negative publicity against the company. Newspaper articles soon appeared suggesting that organic agriculture is unaffordable for poor countries like Egypt and that SEKEM is a pawn of wealthy Europeans. The most damaging attack came with a widely circulated news report that the company’s employees engaged in sun worship on the job, a practice seen as idolatrous and horrific to faithful Muslims. The news article grossly misrepresented a weekly employee assembly where all stand in a circle to emphasize the importance of each individual in the work of the whole and the equal dignity of everyone.
To combat attacks by prayer leaders in local mosques, Dr. Abouleish decided to invite all local Muslim community leaders, mayors, and sheiks to SEKEM to show how the company’s mission promotes important virtues of the Muslim faith. He used passages from the Koran to illustrate how organic agriculture meets the call for faithful Muslims to be “...responsible for the earth, plants and animals.” To make his point more fully, Dr. Abouleish quoted the following from the Koran along with other similar passages:
The sun and the moon pursue their ordered course. The plants and the trees bow down in adoration. He [God] raised the heaven on high and set the balance of all things, that you might not transgress it. Do not disrupt the equilibrium and keep the right measure and do not lose it.
He went on in the meeting to explain exactly how biodynamic agricultural methods support the balance of nature more effectively than the kind of farming that makes heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers. The audience was impressed by the connection between organic agriculture and the call of the Koran for human stewardship of the earth and nature. Positive articles about SEKEM soon appeared in the Egyptian media and public doubts about the company evaporated.
This brief summary of SEKEM’s overcoming of early tribulations offers only a partial and incomplete picture of its accomplishments. For the complete story, I urge readers to take a look at Dr. Abouleish’s inspiring book, SEKEM: A Sustainable Community in the Egyptian Desert.
The SEKEM experience demonstrates a potential in Egyptian agricultural for expansion and employment growth while at the same time doing good turns for both local rural communities and the environment. One of the biggest advantages Egypt and other north African countries such as Tunisia possess for organic food production is their proximity to European markets. Demand in Europe for organics has been growing rapidly in recent years, and the ability of Egypt to provide crops in all seasons is a special competitive benefit. Because of its reduced demand for water relative to conventional crops, organics place less pressure on scarce water resources, and since organics don't require pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, a transition to organic cropping in and adjacent to the Nile Valley would substantially diminish the region’s water pollution problems. The buildup and retention of carbon in organically cropped soils and the reduced dependence on fossil fuel based pesticides and fertilizers that comes from a transition to organics has the positive side-benefit of diminishing the impact of agriculture on climate change. Since organic methods are often more labor intensive than mechanized conventional agriculture, a shift in cropping to organics would in itself increase employment. Perhaps the biggest benefit of SEKEM’s approach is its practice of creating farms on desert lands through the addition of compost to the soil and the development of highly efficient irrigation systems using deep wells. In this way, Egyptian agricultural production is expanded without placing added pressure on scarce Nile Valley land and water resources. SEKEM can’t be accused of ignoring the Egyptian need for good food since almost 70 percent of its total sales occur in the domestic market. The lucrative export market essentially provides added financial power to SEKEM for investing in domestic agriculture to the benefit of Egypt as a whole. The point is simple: expansion of organic agriculture in Egypt and elsewhere can be good for both economic development and the environment, and in this endeavor SEKEM offers an enticing model for solving a multitude of economic, social, and environmental problems in rural areas of the Middle East.
Ibrahim Abouleish is just one man who has successfully sought an intersection between the Muslim faith and European post-materialist values. In his life, he oriented himself both to the tenants of Islam, and to self-expression, individual freedom, tolerance for human differences, and environmental protection. Islamic scholars have little trouble constructing an environmental ethic rooted in the Koran and Islamic theology, but whether such ethical constructs matter in the political arena is the real question we have to address. The SEKEM experience points to the potential for a sea change of environmental practice within the confines of Islamic teaching. The real issue is whether there is support for environmental improvement among those who possess real economic and political power. If the Arab Spring leads to full political democracy in Egypt, then the values of the public as a whole on this issue will be more likely to move to center stage and survey research suggests that the environment will be on the agenda. Philosophy again will matter, but it will now be a blending of Islam and post-materialism, and chances are social entrepreneurs such as Ibrahim Abolish will be leading the charge to a better environmental and economic future.
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