The Negev, Israel’s arid desert in the south, is not only blooming but is also increasingly becoming the fruit and vegetable basket of Israel and Europe. In fact, an Israeli expert suggests, the Negev can turn into a major source of vegetables and fruit export not only for Europe but for the United States as well.
“We have achieved major success in developing arid land and semi-arid land,” Menachem Perlmutter, the engineer chiefly responsible over the past 30 years for bringing Israel’s desert to bloom, said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Perlmutter, whose title is “The Jewish Agency’s Chief Engineer for the Negev,” said that new, scientific methods are responsible for Israel’s success story in the Negev.
According to Perlmutter, who is in the United States on a five-week lecture tour under the sponsorship of the United Jewish Appeal, Israeli scientists developed modern methods that helped turn the Negev’s sand into land. This was possible, he said, mainly by the Israeli invention of drip irrigation.
“With drip irrigation we are able to water the Negev’s sands with brackish water, he explained, noting that the ability to use brackish water, which is available more easily in the Negev, saves the need to use the expensive fresh water that is brought to the desert from over 100 miles away, in the north of Israel.
In addition, Perlmutter continued, “we use the hot sun of the desert, which for generations was considered a curse, for growing summer crops in the winter without additional energy and artificial heating.” The curse of brackish water and scorching sun has become a blessing.
RECORD YIELD FOR COTTON AND PEANUTS
“In the Negev and the Arava (the region between the Dead Sea and Eilat) we are growing all kinds of fruit and vegetable, including green-pepers, tomatoes, cucumbers, dates, melons, eggplants, peanuts and more,” Perlmutter said. He contended that, in fact, Israel achieved records in growing cotton and peanuts.
He noted that while farmers in Arizona grow 1,200 kilos of cotton per acre, Israeli farmers in the Negev grow twice as much, about 2,400 kilos per acre. In Georgia, according to Perlmutter, farmers grow 1,120 kilos of peanuts per acre, while in the Negev the yield is 2,600 kilos per acre.
“Israel sets the best example on how to change the wasteland to life-supporting land,” he said. He said that today there are 189 agricultural settlements in the Negev.
In 1958, Perlmutter pointed out, a United Nations committee of agricultural experts visited Israel and concluded that it would take 25 years until Israel would be able to double its agricultural production. “Well, we did a little better,” Perlmutter said with a smile. “We increased the production twelvefold.”
Perlmutter, who resides in Beersheba in the Negev, said that Israel’s experience in increasing its food supply might be successfully applied, on a wider scale, in famine stricken Africa. “We have proven that the difference between the possible and the impossible is that the latter take just a little more time,” Perlmutter said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
