Category — Middle East

Produced by
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel
via The Horticultural Channel
Oct 20, 2011

The UK may be the heartland of allotments but throughout the world people are coming together and creating their own allotment site, or community gardens as they are often called.

Five years ago, the plot of land on the grounds of the Natural History Museum in Jerusalem was barren and unused. Today it has become the city’s largest community garden.

Designed as a space to grow organic crops, the garden — located just a stone’s throw from a busy street – is also an educational institution and an urban refuge for the people of Jerusalem.

Photographed by Valentina Cattane.

Labib’s private rooftop in Mohandessin is going to serve as a pilot location for one of Cairo’s first permaculture – self-sustaining environmental systems.

By Steven Viney
Valentina Cattane
Al-Masry Al-Youm
04/07/2011

Excerpt:

In Cairo, urban agriculture is growing in popularity as more and more people strive to adopt more eco-friendly approaches to the environment and encourage the decentralization of the community’s reliance on farming corporations.

Many academics and supporters are championing methodologies by hosting workshops in which attendees can learn how to set up small urban gardens and make use of their personal spaces – rooftops, balconies and private gardens.

[Read more →]

To address food security for Beirut planners, policy makers, and municipal officials need to reevaluate the potential of urban agriculture.

By Sandra Rishani
Spatially Just Environments Beirut
June 25, 2011
Sandra is a Beirut-based practicing architect.

Excerpt:

Past present and Future

The case shows how the lack of government initiatives and problems with land tenure and market land prices make urban agriculture rarer in cities like Beirut. Moreover hardly controlled imported crops and competition with them also make the agriculture sector in Lebanon weak. Several steps can be taken to encourage urban agriculture. These may include protection and promotion of urban agriculture by the government.

[Read more →]

With so many flat roofs across the Middle East, surely the region is ripe for a bit of rooftop gardening?

By Arwa Aburawa
Green Prophet
December 15th, 2010

Excerpt:

Neveen Metwally, a researcher at the Central Laboratory for Agriculture Climate in Cairo, Egypt spoke to IRIN about urban gardening in the region. She explained that city dwellers must be convinced of the benefits of urban horticulture by focusing on the needs of ordinary people and the benefits that urban agriculture brings to them. “I can say to someone, ‘A rooftop garden will help the environment’, and they’ll say, ‘No, thank you – I just want to feed my family’. So I must identify and communicate benefits that are of interest to that person.”

[Read more →]

Photo by Emad Badwan

What started as a project from fascination has developed into a relatively lucrative means of contributing to his family’s needs.

By Eva Bartlett
Uruknet.info
2 December 2010

Excerpt:

On the flat, square, cement roof of another Beit Hanoun home, Ahed Shabat, 42, looks after the plants and vegetables growing in tubs and cement planters amidst hung laundry and water tanks.

“We grow things we can use year round, like garlic and onions,” he says. “But also seasonal plants like spinach, parsley, radishes, eggplant, corn, okra and chili peppers.

“We also grow flowers and herbs to use in tea, like mint, mirimiyya and zaatar,” he adds. The latter two herbs, that commonly grow wild in the hills of the occupied West Bank, are a staple for most Palestinians’ tea, and have medicinal uses.

[Read more →]

Growing fruit and vegetables in and around cities increases the supply of fresh, nutritious produce and improves the urban poor’s economic access to food

FAO urban projects in: Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burundi, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Namibia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Senegal, Venezuela. Details here.

Excerpt:

Fruit and vegetables are the richest natural sources of micronutrients. But in developing countries, daily fruit and vegetable consumption is just 20-50 percent of FAO/World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. Urban meals rich in low-cost fats and sugars are also responsible for rising levels of obesity and overweight. In India, diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, are a growing health problem, and mainly in urban areas.

[Read more →]

Film by Dr. Shadi Hamadeh

American University of Beirut
In Arabic with English subtitles
2004
(Very interesting! Mike)

Animal husbandry remains the livelihoods of many communities, even in urban areas. This documentary film is a live witness of Arab Khaldeh families raising sheep in the suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, an integration of rural communities in urban areas.

Watch the film here.

Visit the Regional Website of Urban Agriculture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region here.

Sana’a Gardens. Photo by Jeff Lindstrom
Larger image here.

By Amwl Al-Ariqi
Source: Yemen Times (YCPMI)
Date: 28 Dec 2009

Yemen has suffered greatly during the world food crisis, since early 2008, which increased the number of people in poverty. About two million people are depending on the aids given by the World Food Program in Yemen.

The country imports as much as 75 per cent of its food requirements, and hence is vulnerable to shortages in world stocks. Yemen’s poorest households may have no mechanism to cope with astronomical prices, warned international aids agencies in Yemen.

The WFP says that higher prices have already forced six percent of the population of 20 millions according to 2004, below the poverty line.

[Read more →]

Un hectare à Beyrouth – “Planete reporter” Le Monde.fr et Youtube

Une évocation de l’exploitation de Rahmé, agricultrice à Beyrouth. Les atouts de l’agriculture urbaine sont-ils une réponse aux enjeux environnementaux contemporains?

Un reportage destiné au concours “Planete reporter” organisé par Le Monde.fr et Youtube

Photograph courtesy of OPP-RTI. As food prices rise in Pakistan, some are turning to home gardens to put food on the table.

by Zubeida Mustafa
August 13, 2008

Many enterprising women have risen to meet the challenge by encouraging the poor to acquire self-sufficiency in food by growing their own vegetables in their backyards. Parveen Rahman, director of Orangi Pilot Project’s Research and Training Institute, comments on her organization’s aborted attempt to launch a program encouraging a kitchen garden in every home in the low-income Orangi Township. “This was many years ago and we could not get the women to take an interest in horticulture. So we cultivated OPP’s own little plot of land and grew vegetables there which the staff would purchase.” But now Parveen is hopeful that there will be more interest when she revives the kitchen garden program.

[Read more →]

“Agriculture activities have been receding for many years now in most of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) cities thus its main functions are being hindered. Despite the negative pressures, crop cultivation and animal husbandry remain common throughout the region’s cities. Fertile agricultural areas are still considerable and are expected to remain productive for years to come. Urban agriculture in the MENA countries is at present a highly diverse and widespread activity, yet it still suffers from lack of recognition form the planners, agriculturists, policy-makers, researchers and even by its practitioners.”

Link to ‘Urban Agriculture in the Middle East and North Africa’ Web Site here.

These three young men are part of an international program organized by the YMCA. Sheryl showed them the major features of our Demonstration Garden and they shared with us some of their urban farming world far from Vancouver.

Video in Hebrew shows the community garden’s beginnings in 2005.

Bustan Brody today by Michael Green in
Green Prophet – Forecasts on Israel’s Environment April 17, 2008

“The centre-piece for the Bustan, which translates to ‘orchard’ in both Hebrew and Arabic, are its many fruit trees, which Zavidov says are the ‘backbone’ of the garden’s ecosystem. Priority is given to native species including pomegranate, fig, almond and arava (willow) which, along with the sights and smells of the vegetable patch and herb bushes, owe much of their fertility to the steaming heaps of compost in the far corner, which turn kitchen waste and garden clippings into soil (with the help of bacteria, heat and a few worms).

Link to “How Does Your (Community) Garden Grow?”

[Read more →]