A Climate Deal with China is a Essential Benchmark on the Way to a Stable Climate and a Global Economic Boom!

Go Barack!

http://nyti.ms/10W2wvO

U.S. and China Reach Agreement on Climate After Months of Talks
By MARK LANDLER

President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China, with their delegations, met inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday.
Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIJING — China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases.

The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.

Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement by 2015.

It was the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive two days of meetings between the leaders. Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi also agreed to a military accord designed to avert clashes between Chinese and American planes and warships in the tense waters off the Chinese coast, as well as an understanding to cut tariffs for technology products.

A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, is viewed as essential to concluding a new global accord. Unless Beijing and Washington can resolve their differences, climate experts say, few other countries will agree to mandatory cuts in emissions, and any meaningful worldwide pact will be likely to founder.

“The United States and China have often been seen as antagonists,” said a senior official, speaking in advance of Mr. Obama’s remarks. “We hope that this announcement can usher in a new day in which China and the U.S. can act much more as partners.”

As part of the agreement, Mr. Obama announced that the United States would emit 26 percent to 28 percent less carbon in 2025 than it did in 2005. That is double the pace of reduction it targeted for the period from 2005 to 2020.

China’s pledge to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, if not sooner, is even more remarkable. To reach that goal, Mr. Xi pledged that so-called clean energy sources, like solar power and windmills, would account for 20 percent of China’s total energy production by 2030.

Administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama could face opposition to his plans from a Republican-controlled Congress. While the agreement with China needs no congressional ratification, lawmakers could try to roll back Mr. Obama’s initiatives, undermining the United States’ ability to meet the new reduction targets.

Still, Mr. Obama’s visit, which came days after a setback in the midterm elections, allowed him to reclaim some of the momentum he lost at home. As the campaign was turning against the Democrats last month, Mr. Obama quietly dispatched John Podesta, a senior adviser who oversees climate policy, to Beijing to try to finalize a deal.

For all the talk of collaboration, the United States and China also displayed why they are still fierce rivals for global economic primacy, promoting competing free-trade blocs for the Asian region even as they reached climate and security deals.

The maneuvering came during a conference of Pacific Rim economies held in Beijing that has showcased China’s growing dominance in Asia, but also the determination of the United States, riding a resurgent economy, to reclaim its historical role as a Pacific power.

Adding to the historic nature of the visit, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi were scheduled to give a joint news conference on Wednesday that will include questions from reporters — a rare concession by the Chinese leader to a visiting American president.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Xi invited Mr. Obama to dinner at his official residence, telling his guest he hoped they had laid the foundation for a collaborative relationship — or, as he more metaphorically put it, “A pool begins with many drops of water.”

Greeting Mr. Obama at the gate of the walled leadership compound next to the Forbidden City, Mr. Xi squired him across a brightly lighted stone bridge and into the residence. Mr. Obama told the Chinese president that he wanted to take the relationship “to a new level.”

“When the U.S. and China are able to work together effectively,” he added, “the whole world benefits.”

But as the world witnessed this week, it is more complicated than that. Mr. Xi won approval Tuesday from the 21 countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to study the creation of a China-led free-trade zone that would be an alternative to Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trading bloc that excludes China.

On Monday, Mr. Obama met with members of that group here and claimed progress in negotiating the partnership, a centerpiece of his strategic shift to Asia.

Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership are much further along than those for the nascent Chinese plan, known as the Free Trade Area of Asia Pacific, and some analysts said the approval by the Pacific Rim nations of a two-year study was mainly a gesture to the Chinese hosts to give them something to announce at the meeting.

For all the jockeying, the biggest trade headline was a breakthrough in negotiations with China to eliminate tariffs on information technology products, from video-game consoles and computer software to medical equipment and semiconductors.

The understanding, American officials said, opens the door to expanding a World Trade Organization agreement on these products, assuming other countries can be persuaded to accept the same terms. With China on board, officials predicted a broader deal would be reached swiftly.

“We’re going to take what’s been achieved here in Beijing back to Geneva to work with our W.T.O. partners,” said Michael B. Froman, the United States trade representative. “While we don’t take anything for granted, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to work quickly” to conclude an expansion of the agreement, known as the Information Technology Agreement.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Xi formally welcomed Mr. Obama at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People; they later toasted each other at a state banquet.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama had pressed Mr. Xi to resume a United States-China working group on cybersecurity issues, which abruptly stopped its discussions after the United States charged several Chinese military officers with hacking.

“We did see a chill in the cyber dialogue,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser. “We do believe it’s better if there’s a mechanism for dialogue.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama credited APEC with originating the work on reducing tariffs, saying, “The United States and China have reached an understanding that we hope will contribute to a rapid conclusion of the broader negotiations in Geneva.”

Talks with China over expanding the 1997 accord on information technology broke down last year over the scope of the products covered by the agreement. But after intensive negotiations leading up to Mr. Obama’s visit, Mr. Froman said, the Americans and the Chinese agreed Monday evening to eliminate more than 200 categories of tariffs.

While the United States still exports many high-technology goods, China is the world’s dominant exporter of electronics and has much to gain from an elimination of tariffs. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan increasingly find themselves supplying China’s huge electronics industry, deepening their dependence on decisions made in Beijing.

The administration estimated that expanding the Information Technology Agreement would create up to 60,000 jobs in the United States by eliminating tariffs on goods that generate $1 trillion in sales a year. About $100 billion of those products are American-made. The administration faces a longer path on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including whether Mr. Obama will obtain fast-track trade authority from Congress. That could make it easier for the United States to extract concessions from other countries, since they would have more confidence that the treaty would be ratified by Congress.

While Mr. Froman conceded that sticking points remained, he said, “It’s become clearer and clearer what the landing zones are.” He said that Mr. Obama would seek fast-track authority, but that the best way for him to win congressional passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be to negotiate the best deal.


Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Coral Davenport from Washington.

Travels with Airbnb

Airbnb, a web site for finding rooms, apartments, or houses to rent in the U.S. and around the world, has taken root in countries like Italy and Tunisia where people are desperate for innovative ways to earn a little extra income. The web site's essential economic virtue is to bring into play underutilized resources, while its key social virtue is to bring together people from diverse cultural backgrounds who would not otherwise meet.

Within Airbnb, there is a definite experiential divide, as we found out on a recent trip to Italy and Tunisia. Within the website, one can rent either a room within a house with access to a bathroom and oftentimes the kitchen, or one can rent a complete domicile. The price and quality range is substantial, creating options for almost any travel budget. We discovered a distinct difference between renting a room within someone's home and a complete apartment. Doing the latter amounts to a fairly standard landlord-tenant relationship. Doing the former embeds you in the daily life of the host to varying degrees. This can give one an incredible window to a local culture and sometimes useful information about how to navigate it. One can also get involved in your host's problems of the day, which can be interesting but also stressful. You will for sure get an experience a conventional hotel cannot offer, and probably one you will never forget.

I can't get into details about our particular encounters because of the public nature of the Airbnb website and it's highly functional system of both host and renter reviews. Suffice it to say we had a wonderful dinner with young student hosts that will stick in our memories forever, we learned about the serious problems of unemployment and making ends meet in two countries, and we experienced the wonders and anxieties of family and child-rearing, having for us a familiar ring, but in a culture not our own. We also met and enjoyed a dinner and very special conversation with a fellow tenant and wonderful young Arabic-speaking American student intern working on a degree in International Studies.   Again, these kinds of experiences a tour guide cannot arrange for you. While cultures vary, with each having problems and wonders of its own, in getting through daily life we are all not so different.

Securing a dwelling through Airbnb, no matter whether it's a room or an apartment, has the added virtue of embedding you in a locality outside of the usual tourist zones and exposing you more fully to the actual daily public life of the city, village, or countryside you visit. One can more easily enjoy the experience of shopping in neighborhood grocery stores, stopping for a coffee or glass of wine in a local cafe and watching the daily goings on, eating a meal in a restaurant favored by locals, walking or exercising in a local park, hiking along a country road or urban trail, and still visit famous attractions using local public transit. This we were able to do readily in Florence, Bologna, Ancona, and Rome, Italy as well as Tunis, Tunisia.

Finally, what's good for connecting one with the local culture is also good for spreading tourist dollars more effectively around the local economy. Instead of dumping your money into the coffers of multinational corporate hotels, restaurants, and tour organizers, your dollars will flow to local home owners, shops, street vendors, and transit systems, to individuals and businesses that will themselves be more likely to recycle the money they receive back into the local economy than the multinationals. This is even the case for a clever pickpocket on a crowded tram that unzipped my front pant's pocket an got my wallet. In short, Airbnb is a back door global development strategy that can help the Italy's and Tunisia's of the world to seek a better economic life.   

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. 

A New Kind of Revolution in Egypt

Despite the current political chaos in Egypt, a positive revolution is going on in the desert under the radar. Taking advantage of Egypt's abundant sunshine, water-conserving aquaponics is coming to the desert and producing tons of nutritious plants and fish for the Egytian population and creating new jobs in the process. Thanks to my son Jeremy for bringing this to my attention. Go Egypt! Check out the following article. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/09/egypt-aims-for-revolution-desert-farming-2013923123946325303.html#.UlK8-wQlaMw.gmail

Cairo, Egypt -The hazy desert that extends from the outskirts of Cairo has become the unlikely scene of another revolution that has the potential to transform Egypt - and it is green.
Inhospitable, yellowed wasteland is now yielding up ripe red tomatoes, fresh kale and schools of fish in a bold experiment fuelled by the country's most precious resource: water.
This surprising harvest illustrates how Egypt is witnessing a slow transformation in attitudes towards the environment driven by groups such as Greenpeace and Nawaya alongside an innovative young sustainability movement.
In the vanguard of this movement is Faris Farrag, an Egyptian banker inspired by a love of growing plants and fishing, who has embraced the revolutionary technique of aquaponics at his unassuming farm outside Cairo called "Bustan" (Arabic for orchard).
"As the price of water soars, as the price of petrol soars, and when the subsidies on farming disappear, this model makes sense," says Farrag.
Reviving ancient techniques
Aquaponics, an ancient form of cultivation that originated with the Aztecs, enables farmers to increase yields by growing plants and farming fish in the same closed freshwater system.
Farrag studied the technique under Dr James Rakocy at the University of the Virgin Islands, whose sustainable farming method grew in popularity in the 1980s and is n
Enterprising farmers have implemented the system in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen to save water and increase output.

As the price of water soars, as the price of petrol soars, and when the subsidies on farming disappear, this model makes sense Farris Farrag, former banker

At Bustan, the first commercial aquaponics farm in Egypt, olive trees flank the growing areas sprouting from what seems to be sandy ground, and dusty mesh screens are the only barriers protecting delicate young plants from the expansive tracts of sand.
Water circulates from tanks hosting schools of fleshy Nile tilapia through hydroponic trays which grow vegetables including cucumber, basil, lettuce, kale, peppers and tomatoes on floating foam beds with run-off flushed out to irrigate the trees.
It is an ingenious solution to an old problem in a country dominated by unforgiving deserts where access to fresh water is a luxury in many areas.
The Nile supplies Egypt with almost all its water, 85 percent of which goes to agriculture - but the country has long outgrown agreements with neighbours on its share of this resource as its population has soared to 85 million, and is pressing to renegotiate terms.
Earlier this year the most populous Arab nation made global headlines in an angry disagreement over plans to dam the Blue Nile, denouncing Ethiopia's attempts to reroute the river.
Need for environmental policies
Compounding problems of access to water is pollution, and visitors only have to peer at the Nile's swirling eddies and water catchments to notice the gunk and assorted rubbish that confirm the low priority afforded environmentalism.
Most of the population lives on the 2.9 percent of land that is arable and use the only source of fresh water as an industrial, human and agricultural dump, undeterred by laws that prohibit the throwing of waste into the Nile.
Compounding water pollution, Egypt's annual "black cloud" caused by the burning of agricultural waste costs an estimated $6bn in damage to natural resources and a further $2bn in associated health effects, according to date compiled by the American University in Cairo.
These challenges are a bleak reminder of how desperately Egypt needs environmental policies to protect its fragile agricultural resources.
From Cairo's unremitting expansion into fertile areas to the mountains of garbage strewn on the city's streets, incessant congestion, and misuse of the water supply, there are precious few examples of sustainability.
Which is where Farrag believes aquaponics comes in - Bustan uses 90 percent less water than traditional farming methods in Egypt.
He argues that his model is economically viable and scalable, producing between 6-8 tonnes of fish per year and potentially yielding 45,000 heads of lettuce if it were to grow just a single type of vegetable.
Sustainability underpins the whole operation, he says. Bustan is not land-intensive and Farrag also uses biological pest control methods, such as ladybirds to kill aphids, in order to avoid chemical inputs.
The project also employs two locals, Abdul Rasul Hassanain and his wife Amal, who live on a nearby plot of land and have dramatically increased their role in running the farm.
Dr Ashraf Ghanem, a professor of water engineering at Cairo University, is a strong advocate of the system.
He recently told journalists about the potential benefits of these farms in the Middle East, saying they: "Could serve as a means of income generation for unemployed women, as well as a means of education for children of the household on principles of water saving, plant and fish biology, nutrient cycle, fluid mechanics, hydraulics, microbiology and renewable energies."

A local non-governmental organisation, Nawaya, is taking a leading role in supporting sustainable farming and has brought locals to visit Farrag's farm in a bid to help them swap traditional irrigation techniques for sustainable methods.
But that transition does not come cheap. Inside Bustan, the hum of pumps to ensure the fish are raised in pools with properly filtered water is constant, raising concerns about costs - and posing questions about whether sustainable farming can only be a novelty for the wealthy.
Farrag has invested more than 300,000 Egyptian pounds ($43,500) in his dreamover the last two years - a daunting sum compared to the modest incomes of most rural Egyptians.
But the green entrepreneur is quick to point out that the project could be set up with half that sum, and notes that Bustan was built with locally sourced construction material.
"This is all Egyptian made or stuff that's easy to find in Egypt. Anyone could do it," he says.


With the late afternoon sun hanging low in the sky and the desert wind brushing over olive branches, the hangar-like structure of the farm rests like an oasis.

"The beauty of this system is that you can go to a piece of land that is non-plantable, that is not viable for agriculture, because you build the system"” adds Farrag.

"You can take a rock and build on it. And then you have tomatoes and fish in the desert."

Solar Panels, Irrigation, and Local Social Invention in Egypt

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 essential 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 abundance of sun and soil. 

The standard approach for Nile Valley irrigation agriculture is to simply flood the fields periodically to supply water to plants. In reclaimed desert reliant on scarce groundwater, flooding is to wasteful. Movable sprinklers and drip irrigation systems offer a much more water efficient approach to growing crops. Sprinkler irrigation turns out not to be very effective for anything but low value fodder crops because of leaf salt-burn on broadleaf plants or problems with fungi forming because of water accumulation on leaf surfaces. Drip irrigation systems, with perforated plastic piping laid out in rows adjacent to vegetable or fruit plants, offer a highly efficient method of water and liquid fertilizer delivery to plant roots. In this sense, drip irrigation and hydroponic agriculture bear a similarity. Some drip irrigation farmers take advantage of a lucrative nearby European organic fruit and vegetable market by creating liquid organic fertilizer from animal manure onsite for delivery to plants through the irrigation system. One might think that the investment requirement rules out out all but big farms for drip irrigation, but already in desert landscapes hired workers learn the drip irrigation ropes and install inexpensive drip systems on their own nearby small plots. 

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. Not only does this opportunity allow KarmSolar to make money to sustain itself, but also opens up a chance for Egyptians to find a new ways of making a living without having to depend on an unreliable electrical grid or an incompetent central government. This is to the liking of social entrepreneurs such as KarmSolar’s Ahmed Zahran and Schaduf’s Sherif Hosny who express concerns about government incompetence. It’s fascinating to see entrepreneurial efforts with both a social and an environmental mission, such as Sekem, Schaduf, and KarmSolar, gaining a foothold in the context of government ineffectiveness, political upheaval, and a strongly traditional Muslim culture. 

A Visit to Schaduf Urban Micro Farms: Cairo, Egypt

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 plant roots have access to water containing essential minerals, plants can survive without soil. Since plant survival also requires access to oxygen through roots, roots cannot be completely and perpetually immersed in water unless it is adequately aerated or else the plants will drown. Plants can be grown hydroponically in solution using something as simple as a water in a Mason jar, but more frequently growers use an inert medium in which to grow the plants such as perlite, gravel, mineral wool, or coconut husk. 

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 water use 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 other central ingredient in plant growth is sunshine, something that the rooftops of Cairo have in abundance year around. The city’s low income residents have long used rooftops to raise chickens and goats but not to grow crops. Looking out over Cairo's rooftops from a minaret or any other high vantage points, one sees mostly accumulated debris, satellite dishes, and virtually nothing green. The dream of social entrepreneur, Sherif Hosny, is to create 325 hydroponic rooftop gardens in Cairo by 2013. Hosny named the business, Schaduf, after a simple traditional Egyptian tool for raising water to higher ground for crop irrigation. Sherif’s brother, Tarek, will join the business after completing his college education in the U.S. 

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.

While visiting Cairo, my wife and I, along with our son and his boss, ate a celebratory dinner costing 2,000 Egyptian pounds at a fancy restaurant on the Nile called the Sequoia, a place where Cairenes go to be seen. This means roughly that a low-income rooftop garden costs about 8 Sequoia meal equivalents, an amount of money that doesn’t mean much to us affluent westerners, but can make a huge difference to the lives of Cairo’s urban farmers.

Leaving a successful career as the Middle East Regional Managing Director for mining Giant Rio Tinto Alcan, Sherif Hosny moved on to become a creator of rooftop gardens. Ask him why he gave up a lucrative career to take up urban farming, he will tell you that he wants to help others, likes working with plants, and desires to earn enough income to live on. In these motivations, Hosny differs little from Ibrahim Abouleish, the founder of SEKEM. While he grew up in a Muslim family, Hosni doesn’t claim that his faith played any special role in his decision to found Schaduf, yet what he is doing satisfies Islamic premises much like SEKEM does. 

Hosny chose to do a business rather a nongovernmental organization (NGO) so he wouldn't have to worry about raising money for operations, and he wanted the people he helps to have a vested interest themselves in sustaining the final product, the rooftop farm. If nothing else, Schaduf’s clients will work hard to pay back the micro-loans they take out for their farms, and once they do, their take-home income jumps, encouraging them to keep their efforts up. NGOs are a part of the picture for rooftop farming and make a difference for Schaduf by helping to identify eligible clients and arranging micro-loans. The beauty of the whole venture is that it is self-funding and can be readily scaled up as the business grows.

Hosny continues to work on new ideas for rooftop farming, including an organic nutrient mix to replace the standard chemical variety. Schaduf's most important innovation to date has been the development of the simple brick-sided floor pond to replace the usual wooden racks hydroponic gardeners typically use for plant trays, which turn out to be uneconomical in Cairo because wood is too expensive. In the past Hosny experimented with an aquaponic approach to micro farming using tilapia, but the fish couldn't survive Cairo's winter temperatures in the shallow tanks required by a rooftop location, and heaters proved to costly for his low-income clients. Schaduf is considering selling rooftop hydroponic gardens to more affluent customers who want to grow their own plants and create a green space for their family. This would augment Schaduf's sales and income and increase the scale of its operation allowing the venture to better serve its low-income farmers.

Sherif Hosny fits the classic definition of a social entrepreneur, someone engaged in business to solve social or environmental problems, not just to earn profit. Schaduf and Hosny offer opportunities for poor families to increase their income, expand the supply of healthy greens for Cairenes, and create much needed green space in a city that has very little. In this effort, Hosny and Schaduf engage in social invention—the search for new and innovative methods for solving social and environmental problems. Schaduf not only applies a time-tested technology in a new way, but is creating a new form of pesticide-free agriculture that functions without fossil fuel inputs and requires very little water, a huge benefit in a desert environment. Schaduf, like any other entrepreneurial venture may or may not work out, and if it doesn't Hosni will move onto something else. Given the important functions Schaduf fulfills, I hope and suspect that it will succeed and contribute to a better future for Egyptians.

The Virtues of a Middle Eastern Cuisine

Middle Eastern restaurants seem to be all the rage in Paris, London, New York, and almost any other European or American city.  We in the affluent West have taken a shine to pitas, hummus, falafel, kebabs, stuffed grape leaves, yogurt sauces, and vegetable stews with eggplant, pine nuts, olives, squash, peppers, and a variety of wonderful spices. Shifting toward a Middle Eastern diet would not only be a tasty thing to do, it would be good for our health and a benefit to the environment. 

We in the U.S. consume a bit more than 3,800 calories a day per person of which a whopping 900 come from animal products. This figure is unadjusted for spoilage, waste, and loss in food preparation, meaning that the actual U.S. average daily calorie intake is more like 2,700. The recommended healthy calorie intake for a moderately active adult male is about 2,400 with no more than 10 percent coming from protein. Clearly, we Americans consume much more meat than we need and way too many calories. Nearly 24 percent of our calories come from meat protein alone, well above the 10 percent recommended amount. No wonder we face an epidemic of obesity. The developed countries of the world as a whole including N. America and Europe, don’t do much better in achieving a healthy diet, with an average daily calorie consumption of 3,600 of which 750 comes from animal products. Japan is the only affluent country in the world that comes anywhere near a healthy diet at 2,700 per capita daily calories consumed with 350 from meat products.  Despite discouraging statistics on calorie intakes from most affluent countries of the world, we needn’t necessarily despair about solving the global obesity epidemic. A variety of time-tested, tasty global cuisines that are good for us are available from all over the world including Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. An abundance of calories and large intakes of animal-based protein isn’t essential to the pleasures of eating. 

Consider what would happen if we in the U.S. adopted a Middle Eastern diet or one comparable to it. Our daily calorie consumption would drop to around 3,300 with about 300-400 coming from meat. Our calorie intake would then be on par with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which are fairly affluent, and a bit above Tunisia, a developing country. We Americans could accomplish parity with a Middle Eastern diet simply but cutting our meat consumption in half. Doing so would not only bring substantial health benefits, but would also amount to a huge favor for the environment. 

The essential environmental problem with meat flows from the large amount of land and energy required to grow animal feed grains. To produce a gram of animal protein in the developed countries requires about 10 grams of vegetable protein. Because our extraordinary intake of animal protein in the U.S., we devoting half our farmland to animal protein production for just 24 percent of our calories. If we cut our meat consumption in half and move toward a “Middle Eastern” calorie standard, we could cut our agriculture land for animal products in half, reducing our total land devoted to agriculture by a fourth. This would leave a substantial chunk of land available for natural habitat restoration, renewable energy production, or other uses. Feed grains, especially corn, require a massive amount of fossil fuel energy to cultivate, not only to run farm equipment, but for producing the large volumes of nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides applied to fields and crops. A hectare of corn uses up the amount of energy equivalent to that in 230 gallons of gas, and emits an equivalent of 4 metric tons of CO2 annually. Cutting corn production by a quarter in this country (about half is currently devoted to animal feed) alone would reduce our CO2 emissions by approximately 30 million metric tons per year. Reductions in fertilizer runoff from Midwestern corn fields that end up in the Gulf of Mexico would lead to a lessening of the “dead zone” that appears there annually as a consequence of fertilizer-induced oxygen depletion. 

To sum up, the citizens of North Africa and the Middle East use much less land and energy than we westerners do for food and have a healthier diet as a result. In short, their food production system is much more compact than our own both directly by using less land, and indirectly by absorbing less fossil fuel energy. Hopefully, this part of the world will remain with its wonderful cuisine, and think carefully how to export its products more extensively to the benefit of us all.