Libya’s Agricultural Research Center (ARC) is taking action to bring agricultural research back on track after the disruption caused by the country’s recent months of conflict.
Senior members of the Libyan Research Council, have requested the support of ICARDA – the International Center for Agricultural Research the Dry Areas – to provide technical assistance, strategic support in convening funders for Libya’s agricultural reconstruction and continued capacity building for Libyan research partners.
Libyan partners representing the Libyan Agricultural Research Council and Ministry of Agriculture have requested ICARDA’s leadership to support an assessment of the current state of the country’s national research and extension system for agriculture, and to provide assistance to rebuild where needed. The ARC Libya-ICARDA collaborative program implemented since 2008 has been frozen since February 2011. It will soon be reactivated.
According to Eng. Younes Shouayeb, Director of the ARC: “It is not clear today how many of the vital components of the national system, necessary for our national food production, are intact. The rapid assessment will help determine this. It will start as soon as possible, identify gaps and needs for urgent reconstruction of our country’s agricultural research infrastructure,” he says.
The assessment will be done by a Libyan national team, supported by ICARDA, in a rapid appraisal of the current state of ARC infrastructure, stations and human resources needed to sustain optimal national agricultural research.
“Responding to Libya’s request, ICARDA is urgently sending to Libya seeds of wheat, barley, legume and forage crops for the 2011-2012 cropping season and priority has been given to Libyan scientists for training,” says Dr. Mahmoud Solh, Director General of ICARDA.
ICARDA
November 27, 2011
Libya seeks help to rebuild agricultural research
April 26, 2011
NATO warned against strikes on Libya's 'great river'
NATO-led air strikes on Libya could trigger a human and environmental disaster if they were to damage the country's massive Great Man-Made River (GMMR) project, which facilitates agricultural production in the middle of the Sahara Desert and provides drinking water for over 70% of the Libyan population.
The Great Man-Made River (GMMR) project – globally recognised as the largest water transport system in the world – is among the lesser-known projects undertaken by Muammar Gaddafi, who himself describes the undertaking as the eighth wonder of the world.
The Western world is virtually unaware that underneath the North African country's arid landscape lies a true ocean of high quality fresh water, discovered by chance in the 1950s as part of efforts to find oil in southern Libya.
The artificial river project was conceived in the 1960s and launched in 1984. Today, a total of 4,000 kilometres of pipelines of four metres in diameter have been laid at a depth of two to three metres, running across the country from south to north.
High-quality fossil water is being pumped from hundreds of wells hundreds of metres deep and transported from the south to populated coastal areas in the north, where most of the country's six million inhabitants live and work.
At a cost of over €23 billion, paid for with Libyan petrodollars, and owned by the Great Man-Made River Project Authority, the most expensive irrigation project in history is part of Gaddafi's plan to make Libya self-sufficient in food by irrigating remote agricultural areas in the Sahara Desert.
According to the European Commission, "over 70% of the water from this man-made river system is intended for agricultural purposes". 130,000 hectares of agricultural land are expected to derive from implementing the project, the EU executive added.
The underground ocean, called the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS), is the world's largest fossil water aquifer scheme to date. Libya shares it with three other African nations – Chad, Sudan and Egypt. According to the UN, at current extraction rates the NSAS is not likely to be depleted for a thousand years.
Late last year, Turkish and Libyan delegations met in Tripoli to discuss the possibility of allocating 60,000 hectares of agricultural land in Libya for Turkish investors to produce wheat and corn.
As NATO bombs continue to fall, an emergency meeting was held on Sunday (3 April) by the managing committee of the artificial river project to alert the world about the gravity of the potential consequences if the infrastructure is damaged, according to press sources.
At a press conference held in the project's ultra-modern control room in the southern suburbs of Tripoli, the project leader, Abdelmajid Gahoud warned against a "human and environmental disaster" if the infrastructure is affected by NATO air raids, AFP reported.
Gahoud told journalists that if any part of the infrastructure is damaged, the whole network will be affected and the flow of water that might escape would deprive 4.5 million Libyans of drinking water.
In a joint statement issued after the emergency meeting, the Libyan Secretariat of General People's Committee (Ministry) on Agriculture and the executive committee of the Great Man-Made River urged the UN and its specialised food and environmental agencies to demand that Western coalition forces stop aerial bombing in the regions of Brega, Ajdabia and Benghazi, in the north and east, where the artificial river system is installed, according to press sources.
Euractiv
February 28, 2011
Libya expects 50% rise in wheat harvest
Libya expects its wheat harvest to rise 50 percent this year to 300,000 tonnes, which would put its expected imports of the commodity at 1.3 million tonnes, Ali Arhouma who heads Libya's Grain Production Authority told Reuters.
From 200,000 tonnes harvested in the previous 2010 campaign, the gas and oil exporter plans to raise its domestic wheat production to 600,000 tonnes by 2015.
This would be achieved once a massive canal -- channelling water from aquifers in the desert -- adds 90,000 hectares to the country's wheat-planted areas and with the help of heavy subsidies from the state to farmers, Arhouma said.
To ensure food security, the Libyan government has set up a company dedicated to investment in agricultural projects abroad.
"There are attempts to plant wheat in Ukraine, Turkey, Argentina and Brazil," Arhouma added.
February 07, 2011
Africa’s flourishing Niger Delta threatened by Libya water plan
by Fred Pearce
Threatened by Libya Water Plan Daouda Sanankoua is an aquatic mayor, and proud of it. The elected boss of the district of Deboye arrived for our meeting in the West African state of Mali last month by overnight ferry. At this time of year, the majority of his district is flooded. Thank goodness. “More water is good,” he said, peering at his foreign inquisitor over his glasses. “Everything here depends on the water, but the government is taking our water.”
While we spoke, in the tiny schoolyard of Akka village, a few meters from the lapping waters of Lake Deboye, the headlines around the world brought news of flood disasters in Australia, Brazil, and Sri Lanka. But Daouda was grateful for the annual swelling of the River Niger, which left most of his 24 villages marooned. For without the water, they would be desert.
The floods in what geographers call the inner Niger delta nurture abundant fish for the Bozo people, who lay their nets in every waterway and across the lakes. As the waters recede, they leave wet soils in which the Bambara people plant millet and rice, and they expose vast aquatic pastures of bourgou (or hippo grass) that sustain cattle and goats brought by nomadic Fulani herders from as far away as Mauritania and Burkina Faso. This inland delta is Africa’s second-largest floodplain and one of its most unique wetlands. Seen from space, it is an immense smudge of green and blue on the edge of the Sahara.
But this rare and magnificently productive ecosystem is now facing an unprecedented threat, as a Libyan-backed enterprise has begun construction of a project inside Mali that will divert large amounts of Niger River water for extensive irrigation upstream.
This is all part of a grand plan by Gaddafi to make his desert nation self-sufficient in food.This is all part of a grand plan by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to make his desert nation self-sufficient in food through long-term deals with nearby countries to grow food for Libya. Mali’s president has agreed to the scheme, which numerous experts say will enhance Libyan food security at the expense of Malian food security by sucking dry the river that feeds the inland delta, diminishing the seasonal floods that support rich biodiversity — and thriving agriculture and fisheries vital to a million of Mali’s poorest citizens — on the edge of the Sahara desert.
“More people will lose than win from most irrigation projects in Mali,” says Jane Madgwick, CEO of Netherlands-based Wetlands International, with whom I traveled for three days in the inner Niger delta. “These projects will decrease food security by damaging the livelihoods of those most vulnerable. What they are trying to do at the moment makes no sense because there is simply not enough water.”
Larger than Belgium, the Niger’s inland delta, laced with rivers and marshes, runs for 250 miles from northeast to southwest in central Mali, one of Africa’s poorest countries. The rights to harvest the delta’s fish and graze pastures are based on long-standing custom neither known nor recognized beyond its borders. I had spent days exploring this world as the seasonal floodwaters began to recede. I watched the arrival of the Fulani and talked to fishing families as they packed up their homes and left their villages to set up temporary camps beside the pools where the fish would concentrate in the weeks ahead.
Out there in the waters somewhere were a few surviving hippos, African manatees, and the odd crocodile. Madgwick constantly grabbed her binoculars to spot kingfishers, marsh harriers, cormorants, and purple herons, many of them winter migrants from Europe. Her organization is working with locals to revive flooded forests destroyed in past droughts, to maintain fish ponds among the flooded grasses, to extend the new practice of cultivating bourgou, and to encourage kitchen gardens planted by women’s groups.
But all this is threatened by events upstream, said the mayor: Others want his water. Over a torch-lit evening meal of Nile perch, millet porridge, and bananas — all fruits of the wetland — he said that this year the rains were good and the waters high. But even so, some dams built prior to the Libyan project, which irrigate 235,000 acres, have already diverted water and changed the timing of when it reaches the wetland, damaging the wet pastures and upsetting fish breeding. Some species have disappeared as a result. And, say Madgwick and others, much worse is to come.
Daouda Sanankoua said dams have already diverted water and changed the timing of when it reaches his district. Libya’s wholesale move into Malian irrigation and agriculture is the result of a secret deal between Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Toure, and Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi. Paid for by Gadaffi’s sovereign investment fund, theLibya Africa Portfolio Fund for Investment, the deal hands the land to a Libyan-controlled organization called Malibya for 50 years and gives the Libyans undisclosed rights to the region’s water. Why would the Mali president sign up to this?
Local campaigners say their government is in thrall — and hock — to Libya because it has become dependent on Libya for aid and investment. Many of its civil servants work in offices built by Libya, and international visitors stay at Libyan-built hotels. And, says Lamine Coulibaly, head of communications for the Mali small farmers’ union, CNOP, the government is so obsessed with getting investment for its agriculture that it cannot see when that investment will do more harm than good to its people.
Before going to the delta, I had visited a new canal stretching 25 miles north from the River Niger to 250,000 acres of proposed irrigated land at the edge of the marshes. The canal, part of the Libyan project, was dug last year by Chinese contractors, who are now preparing the first 15,000 acres of fields.
The project is one of many major investments by Libya all across Mali. Gadaffi is using his petrodollars to fund government buildings, hotels, and other high-profile infrastructure. Critics such as Coulibaly call the farm mega-project a land grab. But far more important, it is also a water grab on a huge scale. Coulibaly adds: “We have enough land; we don’t have enough water.”
The scale is breathtaking. The brand new intake works for the scheme can grab as much as 210 cubic meters a second, potentially more than doubling
The delta is a vital green resource for both humans and wildlife on the edge of the Sahara.the amount of water taken from the river for irrigation. The director general of Malibya, Abdalilah Youssef, boasted in 2008 that his new canal could supply up to 4 cubic kilometers of water a year to the enterprise’s fields of rice, tomatoes, and fodder crops for cattle. The current take for all other existing irrigation projects is 2.7 cubic kilometers a year.
Already, engineers at the Office du Niger — an agency created by presidential fiat to develop land upstream of the inner Niger delta — admit they are struggling to maintain the minimum flow of 40 cubic meters a second down the Niger to the delta during the dry season, when an estimated 70 percent of river flow goes to farms rather than the wetland. The effects of taking more could be catastrophic on the floating forests and bourgou pastures at the heart of the delta’s ecosystems and human livelihoods.
A vital green resource for both humans and wildlife on the edge of the Sahara, the delta is a wintering ground for millions of migrating European birds and is vital to the flow of the Niger River and its fisheries. All this is threatened by the Libyan project. For example, planned dams and diversions will reduce the growth of the important bourgou grasses by almost two-thirds, according to a study by Leo Zwarts, a water management expert for the Dutch government.
Now, however, Malian officials have no control over the project. Their president has signed that away. They say the Libyans have carried out a social and environmental impact assessment, although its contents have not been made public. The job of the Malian officials is simply to organize compensation for the thousands of people who are expected to lose their homes to the irrigation projects and to find new land for those farmers who refuse to be turned into Gadaffi’s laborers.
There is no official confirmation, but few doubt that the rice grown here will go to Libya. More than 1,200 miles away across the Sahara, Gaddafi has spent $30 billion over the past three decades building the Great Man-made River, which pumps ancient water from deep beneath the desert through 1,800 miles of huge pipes to irrigate farms on the Mediterranean coast. But even with that giant hydrological enterprise in operation, Libya still depends on foreign markets for three-quarters of its grain.
The giant farm being built on the edge of the inner Niger delta by Malibya is his next big gambit.
Mali of course needs development. It is changing and so are the wants and needs of its people. Schools and clinics are starting to appear; every fishing encampment, however temporary, has a TV antenna; the fishing nets are
Any disruption of the region’s traditional way of life could feed Al Qaeda’s violent agenda.made of nylon and come from China; the kids wear Obama T-shirts and support European soccer teams; motorbikes are starting to replace donkeys; there is sporadic cellphone coverage and young village men break the still wetland nights with their sound systems. These days, too, traditional lines of ethnicity and livelihood are blurred as cattle herders take up fishing, fishers harvest grain, and millet farmers go herding. But the fecundity of the delta remains the basis of their survival in one of the poorest countries on Earth.
Many government officials see saving the wetland as an environmental priority they cannot afford in the push for human development. But in fact, maintaining the wetland is essential to development.
This year, the Mali government is expected to publish a ten-year “sustainable development plan” for the delta. Early drafts are said to sanction a big expansion of irrigation. European aid agencies funding the process have reportedly demanded a rewrite. Whatever it finally contains, the plan faces a long consultation process before being enacted, by which time the game may be over, the water swallowed up by the Libyan project and others.
MORE FROM YALE e360
Does Egypt Own The Nile?
A Battle Over Precious Water
A dispute between Egypt and upstream African nations has brought to the fore a long-standing controversy over who has rights to the waters of the Nile. The outcome, Fred Pearce writes, could have profound consequences for the ecological health of the river and for one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands.
READ MOREThis may not just be a local matter either. With Al Qaeda busy recruiting disaffected people such as the Tuareg nomads around Mali’s borders, any disruption to the traditional way of life could feed its violent agenda.
So this is a key moment that will likely determine the fate of one of Africa’s great natural resources, a living embodiment of how humans and nature can live not just in harmony but in synergy. Get it wrong and they will be creating new desert while claiming all the while to be greening it. Get it wrong and the repercussions could spread far and wide.
As we left the heart of the wetland for the provincial town of Mopti, our boat kept grounding on the bottom of the narrower waterways. Macaques laughed as we scrambled to resume our journey. The low water was simply a sign of the changing season, but it felt like an omen for the wetland.
POSTED ON 03 FEB 2011 IN BUSINESS & INNOVATION POLICY & POLITICS POLICY & POLITICS SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY WATER AFRICA NORTH AMERICA
December 30, 2010
Foreign investment impact in Mali: whose land is it anyway?
by Madeleine Bunting
A new complex of government offices on the banks of the river Niger in Bamako, Mali. It's called the Administrative City and it was financed by the Libyan-backed Malibya development company. It is a powerful symbol of North African oil money and what it has to offer one of the poorest countries in the world.
Several hundred kilometres downstream there is more evidence of the petromillions pouring into Mali. In the dusty flat marshlands of Macina in the Ségou region, enormous green metal sluice gates tower over a massive new canal built by Malibya. Forty kilometres long and 30 metres wide, it is one of the biggest canals in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Chinese contractors have just finished building it and it is eerily quiet, with only the slap of water against the new concrete walls and the chatter of occasional groups of schoolchildren heading home. The canal is destined to irrigate a vast area of land – 100,000 hectares in total – in one of the most controversial and secretive land deals in Africa, a continent that has become a target for a greedy and hungry world.
In the last six years, there has been a dramatic increase in foreign investment in land deals across Africa and the Malibya deal – a 50-year lease agreed by the Malian and Libyan presidents – has become totemic of the fear that this new phenomon of land grabbing will deprive subsistence farmers of their land and their food.
Mali is one of the countries most affected by the scramble for land, and Ségou, the country's rice basket, is at the eye of the storm, with buyers from Senegal, South Africa, China, as well as domestic companies snapping up leases on thousands of hectares. This is land already intensively used in a country with one of the highest population growth rates in the world and where 80% of the people depend on farming for their livelihood.
As you stand by the sluice gates with the chalky brown water churning below, or you drive for the best part of an hour on the new road running alongside the vast canal, you get a sense of the dramatic scale and huge cost – estimated at $54.7m (£34.6m) – of the project.
Big ambitions are about to be unleashed on this land of small, mud walled villages, rice fields and grazing herds of cattle. Some villagers are hopeful that the new scheme will bring much needed irrigation and jobs to these desperately poor communities. Malibya has promoted its scheme as part of a bid to raise agricultural yields and improve food security in a country where many often go hungry.
"I'm not reassured by the promises," says Abduallai Kee, a member of the local farmers' union. "They tell the villagers that they will give compensation for land and that they will give jobs, but this is just to give villagers a feeling of having been 'consulted'." He has seen the maps of how the land will be parcelled out for mechanised rice production and fears that the dispossessed will have no choice but to work as day labourers.
No one knows if there has been an environmental impact assessment or what attempt has been made to map how many people are living on this land. Already, the canal has blocked several important cattle routes. What adds to the sense of insecurity is that Mali has almost no private land titles and land is owned ultimately by the state. Traditionally, this has been interpreted with respect for customary land use – both for grazing and agriculture. But it is far from clear that the rights of those currently living on the land will be protected. Already, more than 150 families have been forced off the land to make way for the canal, and campaigners worry that this is only the start.
"The government are bandits. What they are doing is completely against every law," says Ibrahim Coulibaly, president of the Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes, which has been organising protests. "Even if the land does belong to the government, the people living on it still have rights, and we will do everything to fight against this injustice."
The danger is that it will exacerbate food insecurity in a country where malnutrition is widespread and food production is already seriously threatened by climate change, argues Mark Butler, the country representative for the UK aid agency Tearfund.
Georgette Foure saw her house and garden flattened to make way for the canal. She was paid just £511 for her house and fields. A widow and mother of six children, her eyes well up as she tells her story.
"I used to get a good harvest from my big garden and it helped me feed my family and pay for the children's education. Now we have nowhere to live. How would you feel if someone came early one morning and destroyed everything? It was unbelievable. They gave us some compensation but it was not enough and the land they gave us is a big hole in the ground which we will have to fill before it can even be used to grow anything."
She smooths down her dress; ironically, it is made of fabric celebrating Mali's recent 50th anniversary and emblazoned with the slogan "The Fiftieth is for You."
"It is hard to look ahead because my family depended on me. Now I work a little on other people's farms and doing odd jobs to survive. It's a nightmare and the only thing which gives me strength is to rely on God."
In the village of Kolongo, where Foure's house once stood, more villagers offer stories of inadequate compensation. The tumbled-down mud walls of their demolished homes are still evident beside the new canal.
Tienty Tangaka stands on the baked earth and rubble where his home and garden once stood. Beside him is the massive stump of a neem tree that was cut down to make way for the heavy equipment needed for construction.
"The compensation they gave was not enough to build a new house," he says, his clothes ragged. "We are very deeply shocked. I have lived here all my life but I was told my smallholding was not on the map used by Malibya to build the canal. They took me to the tribunal and I was told that I had built on land where building was not allowed – and I lost my home.
"This project is good for the government but it is not good for the people. Even before it has become operational we are seeing the drawbacks; once the gates opened on the canal we saw all the water pour in, we knew there would be less water for others.
"We had meetings with Malibya but the compensation they have offered is too little for our families. We have no words to describe this betrayal. I'm not worried about myself – I'm 51 and in another 10 years I will be done. But my little children, I don't know what will be their future. I don't know how they will survive."
Standing in the ruins of Tangaka' s old home, two brand new phone masts are visible on the other side of the canal. There are also plans for an airstrip, which is fuelling suspicions that the rice produced is not destined for Mali but for export to Libya to meet the need for cheap food for its large migrant workforce. Like many Middle-Eastern countries, oil-rich Libya imports large quantities of food and it needs to ensure cheap and plentiful supplies.
A little further on, just beyond Kolongo, in the village of Bourant, the David and Goliath conflict between these villagers and Malibya came to a head a few months ago. During his nightshift, one construction worker noticed that the bulldozer was turning up human corpses. Without adequate maps, the construction team had stumbled into two adjacent cemeteries, one for Muslims and one for Christians. Uproar ensued with nearby villagers grabbing farm tools to form a blockade against the bulldozers. Work stopped for several weeks.
Diarra Seynei takes us to the area beside the canal. "Considering the culture and traditions of Mali, this is a big shame, an insult to our values. This was the resting place of our parents," he says.
We walk on the bare earth along the dyke in the baking heat, listening to his story of outrage. We stumble on a fragment of human skull.
"They could have avoided the graveyard but they wanted to do the job quickly and they wanted the straight route. Many people cried when the bodies were taken from the graves. It was a big shock," he adds.
Worst of all, he says, there was no way to identify the broken bodies or to work out which bones were Muslim and which Christian for reburial in the new sites.
As we are talking, a large truck draws up. A Malibya manager approaches us, asking us what we are doing and tells us that the land is private property. Our guides talk vaguely of research and the manager is suspicious, insisting that we should have asked permission from his office. The atmosphere is tense, and we leave.
Local farmers risk losing their land and their livelihood, but perhaps the greatest risk of this project is the loss of water. Malibya has boasted that the new canal has the capacity for 11m cubic metres a day, 4bn cubic metres a year. Campaigners claim that is twice the capacity of any other canal in the region. Their concern is that neighbouring land will be deprived of water when stocks run low; they have heard rumours that Malibya has negotiated priority access to the water.
Water is everything in Mali: half the country is desert and the bulk of the population depends on the river Niger, which dominates the country's central belt and forms one of Africa's biggest inland swamps, an area crucial to Mali's rice production, fishing and nomadic cattleherding economy. Further downstream, another five countries depend on its waters before it finally empties into the Atlantic in Nigeria. The Malibya deal is making not just many Malians anxious, it is making its neighbours uneasy as well.
The Guardian
September 19, 2010
Libya taps 'fossil water' to irrigate desert farms
by Sarah A. Topol
In the middle of the Libyan Desert’s scorched yellow sands, rows of green grapes dangle off vines; almond trees blossom in neat lines, and pear tree orchards stretch into the distance.
Libya is one of the driest countries on Earth, bereft of rivers, lakes, and rain. But here the desert is blooming.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the quest to turn thousands of miles of desert into arable land has taken a backseat to containing an impending water shortage. While many countries in the region bicker over water rights, Libya has taken it upon itself to change its topography – turning sand into soil.
The Great Man-Made River, which is leader Muammar Qaddafi's ambitious answer to the country’s water problems, irrigates Libya’s large desert farms. The 2,333-mile network of pipes ferry water from four major underground aquifers in southern Libya to the northern population centers. Wells punctuate the water’s path, allowing farmers to utilize the water network in their fields.
The Libyan government says the 26-year project has cost $19.58 billion. Nearing completion, the Great Man-Made River is the largest irrigation project in the world and the government says it intends to use it to develop 160,000 hectares (395,000 acres) of farmland. It is also the cheapest available option to irrigate fields in the water-scarce country, which has an average annual rainfall of about one inch.
“Rainfall is just concentrated in 5 percent of the [country’s] area, so more or less, 95 percent or 90 percent of our land is desert,” says Abdul Magid al-Kaot, minister of agriculture, during a PowerPoint presentation that accompanied a recent several-hour government tour of the project and farms outside the capital of Tripoli. “Water is more precious for us than oil. ... Water here in Libya, it’s life.”
Just as Libya mines the desert for crude; they are doing the same for ‘fossil water’ – ice age water preserved in the porous holes of the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer. The massive aquifer stretches under Libya, Egypt, Chad, and Sudan. It includes four freshwater basins inside Libya that contain approximately 10,000 to 12,000 cubic kilometers (480 cubic miles) of ancient water buried as deep as 600 meters (2,000 feet) below the surface of the desert, reporters were told during the government presentation.
Libya moves the precious resource from the ground to five giant above-ground reservoirs through pre-stressed concrete pipes, weighing 75-86 tons, that run 20 feet underground. Cranes weighing 450 tons operated on specially constructed roads to install the mammoth cylinders.
Other countries also drill for underground water, but none do so as intensely as Libya. The country is pulling up 2.5 million cubic meters per day, with the expectation of eventually pumping 6.5 million. Experts liken the project to moving 2.5 million Volkswagen Beetles more than 2000 miles every day – one car weighs roughly the same as a cubic meter of water, which is 2200 pounds.
New drip irrigation techniques are being used to ensure water does not go to waste. More than 70 percent of the water is intended for subsided domestic agriculture, with the rest for citizen consumption. None is reserved for heavy industry, according to the government.
Although it is cheaper for Libya to pump the underground water than use desalination or import the substance, experts are wary of Libya’s decision to irrigate large scale farms with fossil water.
“For Libya this is pretty expensive water. It’s not as expensive as desalinated water, but to irrigate with it is probably not cost effective at the purest sense,” says Aaron Wolf, professor and chair of the department of Geosciences at Oregon State University. “If the farmer had to pay the full cost of pumping and shipping the water to them, they wouldn’t break even on their agriculture, that’s why other countries aren’t doing it.”
The Libyan government heavily subsidizes the water for farmers who pay about $0.62 for one cubic meter; slightly less than half the price citizens pay to drink it.
“This is basically a wonder of the world, because it’s exactly like the pyramids – it’s huge and massive and probably not cost effective,” says Mr. Wolf.
The Libyan government says reserves will last the country 4,625 years according to current rates of demand. But independent estimates indicate that the aquifer could be depleted in as soon as 60 to 100 years, says Stephen Longhorn, a professor of geography at the University of Victoria in Canada
“The main concerns with any non-renewable resource are the depletion rate and the dependency that is built up by using the resource,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Monitor.
“The knock on these projects is that once the water runs out, there is a dependency that can only be met in the future by desalination or importing water," Mr. Longhorn continues. Projects like this create "a legacy that may have short term gains but ultimately makes the country or region very vulnerable in the future.”
For now, as giant sprinklers mist a 100,000 olive tree nursery in a greenhouse surrounded by sand on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libyan fields are flourishing.
Christian Science Monitor
July 05, 2010
Libya makes effective use of pivot irrigation in the desert
Libyan pivot irrigation at Al KHufrah Oasis: These are not crop circles or part of an Alien movie plot!by Maurice Picow
Libya is a country that is not exactly known for having ample quantities of fresh water let alone enough water to be used to any extent in agriculture. Yet this North African desert country has been involved for years in growing crops by a method known as pivot irrigation.
Center pivot irrigation piping: the water comes from here.
It is designed to minimize water loss through evaporation, by utilizing a combination of sprinkler and drip irrigation methods that feeds water from a pivot point within a circle.
The water being fed to the crops is measured and dispersed from a series of circular pipes that are rotated on wheeled platforms the gradually moved out from the center of the circle; the place where the water originated from. By using this circular rotation method, less water is wasted and the crops inside the circular agricultural plot are able to receive the maximum amount of water available.
Although used in a number a number of countries, including India and desert regions of the USA, the use of this method to grow crops is so unique in Libya, that the circular pivot irrigation fields are often photographed by both orbiting satellites and NASA space shuttles passing overhead.
In a country like Libya, where more than 95% of the country consists of the near-waterless Sahara, this type of agriculture is not cheap, and is only possible by being able to tap underground fossil water deposits from a large underground aquifer like they’ve done in the Great Man Made River project. Each circular plot is about 1 km in diameter, and is able to grow a number of different crops including grains, fruits and vegetables, and crops for animal fodder.
Pivot irrigation in Jordan. Image via Manufactured Landscapes blog, a site that looks at man-made structures on earth using Google maps. Libya is not the only Middle Eastern country trying to “green the desert” through the use of irrigation. Jordan is also practicing pivot irrigation (see above image); Israel has been irrigating for years via its patented “drip irrigation” methods through companies like Plastro and Netafim are now being used in arid regions all over the world, even in arch enemy countries like Syria, and other regional countries, including Qatar in the Persian Gulf region which is teaming up with Syria on agriculture projects intended to “green the desert.”
But none of these countries, except for Libya, have these circular pivot irrigated fields which can actually be seen from above by orbiting astronauts. No one really knows how much Libyai has spent on these projects, which are probably costing a lot more than simply importing the crops the country needs. But when one is sitting on what is still one of the world’s largest oil reserves (at least 10% of the world’s oil) then anything is possible – as long as the oil holds out.
Green Prophet
March 31, 2010
Nuclear technology for irrigation in Libya, Algeria
Only a few years ago, the world was fearing the development of nuclear weapons in Libya. Now, nuclear technology is used to improve irrigation, water management and growing potatoes in Libya and neighbouring Algeria. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - which was key in dismantling Libya's atomic bomb programmes - now is involved in developing a more peaceful use of nuclear technology in North Africa.
In Libya, a project by IAEA and the government is using isotopic and nuclear techniques to improve agricultural water management. Constraints to water use efficiency are identified with these techniques, and appropriate land and irrigation management practices are put in place to enhance more crops per drop of water and improve soil water storage.
The project is already giving results, IAEA reports from Libya. With proper fertigation management identified through nuclear techniques "resulted in tremendous savings of water and fertilizer and reduced the environmental impact of irrigation and fertilizer application," the atomic agency says.
Fertigation - which is the application of fertilizer through drip irrigation system - was said to be "an efficient way of controlling water and nutrients in the root-zone helped to increase yield of the potato tuber by more than 150 percent, and reduced the water and nitrogen fertilizer use by more than 50 percent." Additional benefits had included savings on chemical and labour with increased income for farmers.
With support from IAEA, drip irrigation and fertigation is now becoming a well adapted water management practice on light-textured soils of coastal belt in Libya. The Biotechnology Research Centre in Tripoli carried out a series of drip fertigation for potato production. "Drip fertigation is a potential irrigation and nitrogen management tool for potato production in Libya that can improve field water-use efficiency," says Abdulhafied Ellafi of Libya's Tajoura Nuclear Research Centre.
In neighbouring Algeria, nuclear techniques are now being used to stop desertification, soil salinisation and the recent drastic reduction of arable land. In the western part of the country, where major irrigation schemes are located, some 30 percent of arable lands are risking to be lost to desertification and salinisation.
Algerian authorities, together with IAEA, have started a project in western Algeria using nuclear techniques "to reduce salinity induced land degradation through developing appropriate irrigation, drainage, soil and crop management practices so that preventive and corrective measures of salt-affected agricultural lands can be established."
The use of nuclear technology in Algeria's agricultures is mostly defined to the mapping of problem areas, such as monitoring salinity levels, measuring nutrition levels and identifying water quality. This again can be used to control irrigation scheduling according to crop needs, thus assuring healthy crops and avoiding further salinisation of soils.
This peaceful use of nuclear technology in North Africa indeed is a welcome contribution to agricultural science, according to IAEA. Studies of the application of these techniques in Algeria and Libya are already being assessed, with the aim of using this technology on other locations.
And sub-Saharan Africa is among the regions that could benefit most from this research. 18 African countries are now participating in a new regional irrigation project to introduce and pilot-test appropriate small scale irrigation technologies, with the aim of developing irrigation systems for small-scale farmers for increasing yield and quality of high value crops, and to improve their income and livelihood, according to IAEA.
Afrol
February 28, 2010
Libya-South Africa farm deal awaits investment protection agreement
by Muchena Zigomo
A new land deal allowing South African farmers to produce livestock, milk and fruit in Libya has been put on hold pending the finalisation of an investment protection agreement between the two countries.
Theo de Jager, Deputy President of South Africa's largest farmers' union Agri SA said a protection agreement between the two countries had been drafted.
"We were happy with the opportunities we were offered in Libya, but the problem now is that the investment protection agreement between the South African and Libyan governments has not been ratified, so we are not fully protected if we go there," Theo de Jager, Deputy President of farmers union Agri SA said on February 25.
He said Libya had offered South African farmers a number of agricultural opportunities, including a 40,000 hectare olive farm and a large fully equipped dairy farm with about 3,600 dairy cattle. Countries are offering the opportunities in return for investment and farming expertise.
"The infrastructure is in place, but perhaps because of a lack of know-how in farming they haven't been able to utilise and make those ventures profitable," De Jager said on the sidelines of an agriculture conference.
South African farmers have attracted widespread interest across the continent as other countries try to tap into their expertise to boost food production and ensure food security. Africa's biggest economy also has one of the continent's best-developed agriculture sectors and is a top producer of maize, wheat and livestock.
"We're talking to people in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Malawi and there's also quite a lot of interest from Angola at the moment but any plans to go to those countries will primarily take into account the existence of (investment) protection agreements," De Jager said.
South African agriculture minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson earlier warned farmers to only venture into regions where bilateral agreements were in place between countries. "I would encourage you to go only to those countries where country-to-country agreements are in place because those are safer," she told the conference.
Agri SA signed a deal with the Congo Republic last year that will give South African farmers access to up to 10 million hectares of farmland in the central African country.
The deal, potentially one of the largest land agreements on the continent and part of Congo's plan to improve food security, will allow South African farmers to lease land for maize, soy beans, poultry and dairy cattle among other produce.
De Jager said the union was in the process of selecting farmers to take up the offer.
"There were about 1,700 farmers who expressed an interest, so we're now in the process of selecting those farmers who will go there," he said.
Reuters
May 28, 2009
Libya to grow wheat in Ukraine
Libya has agreed with Ukraine to grow wheat on 100,000 hectares of land and export the grain to the North African country, Libyan state media and Ukrainian officials reported in late May.But Ukrainian officials and analysts said the agreement, which is still to be signed, faced many obstacles including the acquisition of leased land.
Ukraine now exports its milling wheat at about $200 per tonne FOB.
The Guardian
March 02, 2009
Libya to invest in agriculture in Guyana
A top government official says Libya will soon become a major partner in Guyana's agriculture sector.
Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud says Guyana has been lobbying Libya to help develop mega-farms in the interior, where the majority of inhabitants live in poverty and depend on rice cultivation for both food and income.
Persaud made the comments a few days after a Libyan delegation traveled to Guyana to meet with agriculture officials. He says another team from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's government is expected soon, possibly to negotiate land leases.
President Bharrat Jagdeo visited the North African country in January. Shortly afterwards, Guyana announced that Libya would open an embassy there.
IHT
April 02, 2008
Libya to assist Uganda build instant coffee factory
Uganda will build its first instant coffee factory by the end of this year following an agreement between the governments of Uganda and Libya.
According to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), the terms of the agreement signed last September oblige the government of Uganda to provide land for the plant as well as technical support, with regulatory requirements.
Libya, through its Libyan Africa Investment Portfolio, will provide the capital.
UCDA officials said Libya had agreed to invest between $20 million and $60 million depending on the type of equipment chosen for the plant. They also confirmed that the Uganda Investment Authority had already secured land for the factory at Namanve industrial park in Kampala.
This is the third time the government is engaging a foreign investor in attempt to set up an instant coffee plant.
In 2006, the government signed a similar agreement with Tata Ltd of India although implementation of the project is over a year behind schedule, while in 2005 negotiations with Continental Coffee — an Indian and British-owned firm — stalled after the government declined to give it monopoly status.
News of the proposed Libyan-backed project comes at a time when coffee prices in the international market have increased threefold over the past five years to $2,600 a tonne for robusta and $3,527 a tonne for arabica, the highest in 12 years.
In Uganda, farmgate prices are $2 per kg for arabica and $1.76 per kg for robusta. When translated to 30 bags of 60kg of coffee each, which most farmers produce per year on average, they earn about Ush6.1 million ($3,600) at the farm-gate.
An instant coffee plant would add value to Ugandan coffee, fetch premium prices for the farmers.
Currently, the quality remains low due to poor post-harvest handling, says UCDA.
Some countries in the region like Rwanda have revived their coffee production with the emphasis on quality and are now exporting more speciality coffee than Uganda, which sells only a third of its 150,000 tonnes output, according to UCDA. The ideal situation is to follow in the footsteps of Ethiopia and add value to the commodity. This would create more jobs and increase revenue from coffee.
However due to constraints such as capital, a more feasible investment is in processing instant coffee whose demand stands at about 18 per cent of the international market as against speciality coffee at about 12 per cent.
Uganda exports 95 per cent of its coffee as green beans, maintaining its primary producer status.
UCDA has blamed the situation on the inability of the private sector to put up a coffee plant.
Henry Ngabirano, managing director of UCDA, said, “You need more than $20 million to put up an instant coffee plant, and to get that kind of credit, one would need assets in collateral worth about $33 million. Private sector players interested in the coffee business don’t have that kind of money or security.”
However, observers say there is little government commitment to add value to coffee.
“For a sector that earns the most export revenue for the country — $256 million in 2007 — and generates about $500 million in total, the government should have little difficulty in finding $20 million for a coffee factory; it guarantees loans to other sectors that contribute much less to the economy,” said an observer.
In 2006, UCDA introduced a group of private coffee firms in Uganda to the Danish government, which had expressed interest in funding an instant coffee plant in the country.
However, an appraisal mission from the prospective financiers rejected the group on the grounds that they had a weak capital outlay, little experience in the business.
“It is mainly because capital constraints that the government decided to engage foreign investors to take up the business,” said Mr Ngabirano.
Some experts feel that for an instant coffee plant to succeed, there must be a local market as well, as against the government strategy to produce only for export to countries such as Dubai and the US.
David Barry, treasurer of the East African Fine Coffees Association and managing director of Kyagalanyi Coffee Ltd, a member of Swiss-owned Volcafe, was quoted recently as saying, “A healthy volume domestic market is almost a pre-requisite for developing a roasting and soluble business in the producing country.”
