<
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/omans-mountain-oases-offer-ancient-farming-lessons-for-a-warming-future/>
"In some ways, village life on Oman’s Jabal Akhdar Mountain is the same as it
has always been. Water still runs through the ancient aflaj channels. People
still cultivate pomegranates, walnuts and grapes. Goats still go out to
pasture, and the day begins and ends with the call to prayer.
In other ways, life — and farming — is quite different. Over the past 50 years,
Oman has developed at a dizzying speed, while climate change is also impacting
agriculture. As change sweeps across these mountains, people are searching for
ways to preserve and adapt these ancient oasis agroecological systems.
At first glance, Oman’s Hajar Mountains are an unlikely place for agriculture.
This is a dramatic landscape of rugged plateaus slashed by deep, snaking
canyons. It’s almost always sunny, and when it does rain, water rushes across
the rocky hillslopes and cascades down the canyon walls in magnificent
torrents.
But by channeling water from mountain springs and pools to terraced fields, and
enriching the soils with manure from their goats, people have, for millennia,
managed to grow an astonishing variety of food in a seemingly inhospitable
land.
“It’s the only place in the world that I know of where 1,500 years of irrigated
agriculture … has not led to salinization,” says Andreas Bürkert, professor in
agroecosystems research at the University of Kassel in Germany. “In Oman, we
can learn how [to do] agroforestry under irrigated dryland conditions with very
little water.”
As the world grapples with unprecedented changes, Oman’s traditional knowledge
of how to grow food sustainably in a dry climate may prove invaluable."
Via
Fix the News:
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https://fixthenews.com/good-news-cancer-canada-conservation-png-iberian-lynx/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
