We Could Feed the World
May 22, 2012
A recent article by Rahel Musleah in the New Jersey Jewish Standard highlights the work that BGU is doing in cooperation with farmers thoroughout the Negev to produce food in harsh desert conditions.
She notes that while Israel is famously known as a land of milk and honey, it is hardly one that is flowing with water. For Israeli scientists today, maximizing water use is a key focus for research and innovation.
It may also be key to avoiding the regional war everyone says must happen some day — a war for water.
For the scientists, though, the main goal is finding ways to grow plentiful amounts of food in arid lands.
In the Negev and the Arava, Israel’s long, eastern valley, tomatoes, peppers, olives, and grapes are blossoming from arid land.
This is despite the fact that annual rainfall totals are measured in mere inches and the proximity to the Dead Sea produces groundwater that is highly saline.
“If we figure out how to solve the combined stresses of drought and salinity, we could feed the world,” says Dr. Naftali Lazarovitch, a specialist in irrigation at BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research.
Read full article on the New Jersey Jewish Standard Web site >>
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