Farming in the Saudi Arabian desert

Farming in the Saudi Arabian desert Today’s Video of the Day comes courtesy of the European Space Agency (ESA) and features a look at how farming in the Saudi Arabian desert is made possible.

The images, taken from the Copernicus Sentinel satellites, reveal crop fields in the middle of Saudi Arabia’s Wadi As-Sirhan basin. These crops are irrigated by ancient water reserves, also called fossil water, that were formed thousands of years ago when this area received much more rainfall.

At Jizan in the country’s well-watered southwest, the Al-Hikmah Research Station is producing tropical fruits including pineapples, paw-paws, bananas, mangoes and guavas. This agricultural transformation has altered the country’s traditional diet, supplying a diversity of local foods unimaginable a few generations ago.

The water supply in Saudi Arabia, and specifically the lack of water has always been the major constraint on agriculture and the determining factor on where cultivation occurred. The kingdom has no lakes or rivers. Agriculture in Saudi Arabia is focused on the export of dates dairy products eggs fish poultry fruits vegetables and flowers to markets around the world. Farming in the Saudi Arabian desert as shown above in video shows the farming in the mostly desert landscape to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat production.

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By Rory Arnold, Earth.com Staff Writer

Video Credit: European Space Agency