Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Social Invention Continues in Egypt


Anyone who cares about Egypt can’t help but feel depressed about the course of recent events in that country. The liberating optimism of the Egyptian Arab Spring has now been transformed into violent political oppression by the military in its quest to return the country to dictatorial rule by bureaucratic elites accustomed to doing the military's bidding.

Talk of public, collective social innovations, such as expanding Cairo's metro and transit system to alleviate its crushing traffic problem, or investing in public facilities to the benefit of the city's neighborhoods where informal housing predominates, for the moment is dead. Nor is anyone talking about large scale investments to take advantage of the country's abundant solar energy potential. These are the kind of projects that could create substantial benefits as well as employment opportunities for the Egyptian people. 

This is not to say that all actions with the purpose of economic and social improvement are dead. Outside the control, and under the radar, of state rule, private sector social innovators continue to do their work, including Sekem Organics, Schaduf Urban Microfarms, and KarmSolar. For a detailed discussion of these organizations, take a look at my Philosophy for a Green Economic Future or http://greenandprosperousmiddleeast.blogspot.com. We can now add to this list an innovative aquaponics farm called "Bustan" on Cairo's desert outskirts raising leafy green produce and Tilapia together in a virtuous combined cycle of water and nutrients. These four organizations have carried out their various activities despite surrounding political disruptions as we will now see.

SEKEM, headquartered at Salam City, Cairo, includes five different companies that employ approximately 1,600 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. The company generated approximately 240 million EGP (Egyptian Pounds) in net sales for 2012 and earned 1.5 million EGP in profit. About 22 percent of its sales originate from exports, and the rest from the domestic market. One company in the group, ISIS, distributes more than 80 percent of the herbal teas sold in Egypt. SEKEM currently operates four 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 to the benefit of global climate stability. 

SEKEM’s goals and activities extend well beyond those of a conventional business in its pursuit of its founding mission to create ecologically sustainable oases in the desert where health-giving organic goods can be grown in a manner protective of both the local and and international environment. In and around these oases, SEKEM also 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.  SEKEM’s vision of advancing sustainable development took a substantial leap forward in 2012 with the opening of its Heliopolis University after a ten-year planning and development phase. The University offers degree programs in pharmacy, engineering, and business administration, with majors available in such area as accounting, marketing, economics, environmental studies, renewable energy, and water conservation management. 

Along with everyone else in Egypt, SEKEM continues to face the challenges of political upheaval in 2013, but has worked hard to overcome economic disruptions and to further advance its environmental, economic, and social purposes. Work on soil reclamation continues this year on its Sinai farm where a new crop of organic potatoes was successfully grown and harvested. SEKEM also furthered its efforts in 2013 to more fully integrate women into the labor force by expanding their work opportunities. The custom in Egypt is for woman to stay at home once they marry and care for the family, but many women today desire to maintain a degree of economic independence as well as connections to the larger local community. To expand employment opportunities SEKEM, unlike other businesses, continues to employ labor intensive technologies as opposed to automation where economically feasible. A conference on solar thermal energy held in June at Heliopolis University featured SEKEM’s solar thermal pilot plant which provides hot water for industrial purposes on its nearby farm at Belbeis. This is a short list of SEKEM’s projects and activities that continue despite the huge political challenges Egypt is facing. Social invention and innovation is alive and well at one of the country’s most successful and solidly established independent social ventures.

A newer, younger enterprise addressing critical environmental and economic problems, Schaduf Urban Microfarms, is also alive and well. To backyard gardeners who love to muck around in real dirt, growing plants in water somehow seems other-worldly, but the science of doing so, known as hydroponics, is a well established technology. Soil in natural conditions serves as a reservoir for water and plant nutrients, but plants don’t actually require soil to survive. Nutrients are absorbed by plants through roots as inorganic mineral ions dissolved in water. So long as their roots have access to water containing essential minerals as well as oxygen, plants can survive without soil and can be grown "hydroponically" in  something as simple as water in a Mason jar, but more frequently growers use an inert medium such as perlite, gravel, mineral wool, or coconut husk with water flowing through it. 

Hydroponic gardening has virtues that offer special advantages for growing plants in an arid climate like Cairo’s. In soil-based farming, applying the right amount of water is a tricky business. Too much watering causes plants to die from a lack of oxygen, and too little leads to plant starvation. For hydroponic farming, plant roots can be continuously or frequently exposed to nutrient-laden water and the plants can absorb as much or as little as they want. Unused water can be drained away and recycled keeping consumption to a bare minimum.  The key challenge for the hydroponic approach is to get the balance of needed mineral in the water just right, including macronutrients such as nitrates, calcium, phosphate, and magnesium, and micronutrients such as iron, copper, zinc, boron, chlorine and nickel. In addition to an appropriate balance of nutrients, care must be taken to not let the water’s pH get out of whack or salts to build up excessively. Any interruption in water flows can be catastrophic, and water must be stored in light-free tanks to prevent the formation of algae. A successful hydroponic system can achieve high levels of productivity with a modest water and nutrient input. 

The dream of social entrepreneur, Sherif Hosny, is to create 325 hydroponic rooftop gardens in Cairo. Hosny named the business, Schaduf, after a simple traditional Egyptian tool for raising water to higher ground for crop irrigation. The business offers Cairo’s poorest residents a simple form of hydroponic farming. Construct on a family's rooftop three 20 square meter ponds made of brick sides about 10 centimeters high and place a waterproof liner on the inner surface, fill with water and cover with sheets of floating styrofoam to serve as a platform for plants, and install a circulating pump for oxygenating the water. Add a standard hydroponic nutrient mix and plant the seedlings. Come by and check the pH and electrolyte levels weekly, replenish nutrients as needed, and soon with the help of Egypt's sun and heat you will have a rooftop of green produce that can be sold for 300-500 Egyptian pounds a month, significantly increasing a Cairene's family income and creating a wonderful place for children to play that pulls them away from the dangers of the streets. Sherif's company, Schaduf Urban Micro Farms, will provide a poor family with a rooftop farm costing about 4,000 Egyptian pounds that can be financed with a micro-loan easily paid off in a year. So far Schaduf has installed and maintains 15 farms, periodically checking the nutrient mix, controlling any pests organically, and collecting and selling the produce in a local Zamalek farmer's market for its clients.

A second youthful social enterprise, Karmsolar is also successfully navigating the perils of Egypt’s political upheaval. Ahmed Zahran grew up in Cairo, received a bachelor’s degree in finance from the American University in Cairo, and a masters from the University of London. While he never was exposed to renewable energy in his studies, he gained an interest in it early on, and wanted to work in the field. Because opportunities were nonexistent in Egypt, Zahran went work for Shell Oil Company and eventually landed in the company’s carbon emissions trading department. Here it soon became obvious to him that the only way to reduce emissions was to shift from fossil fuels to solar, and his work at Shell was not going to help much in achieving that goal. 

Zahran returned to Egypt and went to work for a solar energy company that unfortunately succumbed to the upheaval of the Arab Spring. This experience led Zahran to join with some friends in founding KarmSolar for the purpose of developing solar energy applications to serve the unique needs of Egyptians who live in desert landscapes. KarmSolar has gained global attention for its work on high capacity off-grid solar water pumps that recover underground water from very deep wells for agricultural uses. The driving premise of KarmSolar is to offer Egyptians the opportunity to live in off-grid desert communities and have access to essential unexploited groundwater resources available on the edges of the Nile Valley and desert oases. The idea is to pull population away from an overcrowded Nile and take advantage of the desert’s abundant sun and soil. The big problem currently for agriculture on reclaimed Egyptian desert far away from an electrical grid is dependence on diesel powered generators that require difficult to deliver and expensive liquid fuels for their operation. The big advantage offered by the KarmSolar approach is an independent local source of electrical power that can run irrigation pumps and other kinds of equipment such as water purifiers and desalinators. The marriage of solar power and water efficient-irrigation makes feasible the creation of new communities in the desert wherever groundwater can be found.

In 2013 KarmSolar signed contracts for 400 kilowatts of solar capacity in the desert in comparison to 50 kilowatts for 2012. Even more important, KarmSolar is currently developing an all-solar village that will provide living space for 500 workers scheduled for completion by 2016 on the 5,000 acre Al Tayeebat farm in the Bahareya Oasis. This is after the company cut its teeth constructing a 50 kilowatt off-grid high-capacity solar system powering a submersible water pump on Al Tayeebat and its own eco-friendly solar-powered headquarters building using natural earth materials at Bahareya. 

We have embodied in these three Egyptian enterprises innovations in organic desert soil reclamation, hydroponic urban farming, and solar powered desert irrigation, and to this list we can now add aquaponics. At his farm called “Bustan” (Arabic for orchard) in the desert on Cairo’s outskirts, Faris Farraq, a banker who loves to grow plants and catch fish, recently adopted an aquaponic scheme of production. With the help of a local couple, he grows fresh kale, cucumbers, basil, lettuce, green peppers and tomatoes in the bright and ever-present Egyptian sun, and raises meaty Nile tilapia. Aquaponics extends hydroponics to add fish to the nutrient cycle. Vegetables grow in a neutral medium with their roots exposed to nutrient laden water from which they remove nutritious but potentially polluting chemicals. The cleansed water then flows to tanks where fish reside, eat fish food, and eliminate wastes. Fish tank waters, exposed to bacteria that convert nitrogen wastes to a form useable by plants, get pumped back through trays of leafy green vegetables, completing the cycle. In the process, very little water goes to waste and nutrient inputs to the system are efficiently absorbed by plants and fish. Just like Sekem, Schaduf, and KarmSolar, Faris Farraq is turning a water-scarce, brutally hot desert into an economic virtue capable of supplying food and a means of earning a living to the people of Egypt. While still in the experimental stage of his work, Farraq argues that his system can be expanded in scale to profitably produce as much 6-8 tons of fish and 45,000 heads of lettuce per year. Whether all this work of our Egyptian social entrepreneurs stands the test of time remains to be seen, but what they have already accomplished gives the country a ray of hope where at the moment there doesn't otherwise seem to be much. 

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