Aiming to demonstrate that a combination of existing environmental technologies can be utilized to produce crops profitably in low lying desert areas that normally have little agricultural activity or natural vegetation, the Sahara Forest Project (SFP) was officially opened in December 2012 by HH the Heir Apparent Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Prime minister of Qatar who said: “This pilot Project could show how we can grow vegetables with less water or brackish water. I think this will not be important only to Qatar, but to the whole region and elsewhere where they have the same climate as Qatar. So, I have a lot of hope.”
CMW horticulture supplied much of the equipment for the VDH plastic greenhouse including Priva environmental control, Nutrijet fertiliser dosing, irrigation, crop gutters and Huisman screens as well as numerous other fixtures and fittings.
The aim: 'Enabling restorative growth'
The project team have very clear ideas about what they would like to achieve: 'The Sahara Forest Project has a vision of creating re-vegetation and green jobs through profitable production of food, water, clean electricity and biomass in desert areas. This is done by combining already existing and proven environmental technologies, such as evaporation of seawater to create cooling and distilled fresh water (i.e. in the saltwater based greenhouse) and solar thermal technologies. In this way .
The Sahara Forest Project is designed to utilize what we have enough of to produce what we need more of, using deserts, saltwater and CO2 to produce food, water and energy.'
For more information see: http://saharaforestproject.com/