Farming the Desert

Every couple of years, some enterprising engineer resuscitates the idea of towing an iceberg to the Arabian Peninsula to slake the thirst of the water-poor, energy-rich countries of the Persian Gulf. A Saudi princeling first floated the notion in 1977 at a conference in Ames, Iowa, on iceberg utilization. He arranged the delivery, via truck and helicopter, of an Alaskan mini-berg to the gathering, where it was hacked into chunks to cool attendees’ drinks.

That may have been the closest Gulf Arabs have come to sipping from a glacier, but it was hardly the last outlandish scheme to green the desert. From seeding clouds to erecting a wall of trees against the advancing Sahara, scientists have long sought an answer to the challenge of growing crops in drought-struck lands. Drylands account for 41% of the world’s land surface and are home to more than 2 billion people. Those numbers have heightened fears that climate change will exacerbate a chronic global food crisis–and once ludicrously expensive ideas suddenly seem plausible.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Qatar, a spit of land the size of Connecticut that has no rivers, no lakes and annual rainfall averaging 2.9 in. And where Qatar goes, other water-poor countries in the region are likely to follow. The man responsible for increasing Qatar’s food-supply independence, Fahad bin Mohammed al-Attiya, believes the iceberg dreamers weren’t ambitious enough: that Saudi princeling’s planned 100 million-ton chunk of glacier would have produced only 60 days’ worth of water at current consumption levels. “And then what?” asks al-Attiya. As executive chairman of Qatar’s National Food Security Program (QNFSP), al-Attiya is trying to turn Qatar’s food-import ratio on its head: instead of importing 90% of its food, he hopes, Qatar will produce nearly half of it locally within the next 12 years.

To get there, al-Attiya envisions nothing less than the complete re-engineering of Qatar’s environment, from new desalination plants and an upending of how Qatar uses energy to greenhouses that cover square miles instead of acres and a social revolution that will elevate farmers. The project’s total budget is $30 billion, 80% of which will come from private-sector investments. Al-Attiya must also convince skeptical Qataris that a homegrown meal is essential for national security–a notion bolstered last fall when Saudi Arabia, one of Qatar’s biggest food suppliers, banned the export of poultry, potatoes and onions because of rising prices at home.

Qatar’s drive for food independence has its origins in the 2007–08 global food crisis. Drought in grain-producing countries, combined with export restrictions and commodity speculation, sent prices soaring. “That was a real wake-up call,” says al-Attiya. “We are the richest country in the world, and we couldn’t even buy rice.” Other Gulf states responded to the crisis by buying fertile land in foreign countries, but al-Attiya did not believe that would be sustainable. The only solution, he decided, was to produce everything in-house.

With backing from Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, al-Attiya and his team sought out the best technologies to help Qatar achieve its goals. “We clearly needed more farms, more greenhouses, but what about water? So we desalinate seawater, but with what power? You don’t want more global warming by using fossil fuels, so it has to be solar,” he says. “Everything has to work together.”

Getting Wetter

When Al-Attiya’s father was born, food security meant an ample supply of dates and camel meat. Water from the country’s few oases supplied a tiny population. That all changed with the advent of oil, and now, paradoxically, Qatar finds itself at its most insecure, even as the wealth rolls in. Residents consume about 2.6 billion gallons of desalinated water a day, a third more than what Israel uses for a population nearly four times the size. Agriculture on a scale big enough to feed Qatar’s 1.8 million residents would require up to an additional 91 billion gallons of desalinated water a day, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Qatar’s few existing farms rely exclusively on wells that tap a technically depleted aquifer. Well water is free, so farmers until now have had little incentive to conserve. “We farm in Qatar as if we lived on the banks of the Nile,” complains al-Attiya as he conducts a tour of his family farm, a lush oasis framed by towering date palms and thirsty poplars. He envisions a future in which every drop of water reaches its intended target: the roots of a plant engineered for maximum productivity, grown in an environment regulated to mitigate the effects of summer heat. That, he jokes, will be his Arab Spring.

The infrastructure for Qatar’s future farming will be heavily subsidized. The desalinated water, piped in from new facilities on the coast, will still be free but carefully monitored. Farmers will be trained in the latest conservation techniques–and regulated. Anyone caught growing tomatoes the wrong way will risk having his tap turned off.

When the desalination facilities are completed in 2025, Qatar will inject additional water into the depleted aquifer. But desalination isn’t cheap economically or environmentally. Qatar’s scheme will produce nearly 175 tons of salt per day. Qatar pumps the resulting brine back into the Gulf, as do Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Kuwait, and the long-term effects of that pollution are not yet clear. “The Gulf is already a stressed body of water,” says Fadhil Sadooni, assistant director of the Environmental Studies Center at Qatar University, “and I don’t think it can sustain this kind of pollution for the long term.”

Conventional desalination methods are energy intensive, but the QNFSP aims to desalinate all its agricultural water needs using solar energy alone. Producing the water necessary for Qatar’s agricultural vision will require 753 megawatts of additional power-generation capacity. That’s a solar-panel park equivalent in size to 2,000 soccer fields–but most existing panels are designed for cooler climates. A Doha-based renewable firm called Green Gulf, along with Chevron Qatar, is using a $10 million grant from the QNFSP to identify technologies suited for Qatar’s climate.

On the way back from his farm, al-Attiya fiddles with the navigation map on the dashboard of his Porsche Cayenne to deliver an impromptu lecture on Qatar’s agricultural prospects. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, only 1% of the country’s terrain is arable. Qataris are a little more optimistic and have identified 170,000 acres, or 6% of the land, that can be farmed. But even if Qatar were to lower expectations to produce 1 million tons of food per year, or about 40% of total needs, it’s nowhere near enough–that is, if traditional farming methods are used. The QNFSP has looked at 400 different crops and identified those that can be economically grown using new breeds, greenhouses and hydroponic technology. The goal is to grow five times the amount of produce on the same amount of land using 30% less water.

Still, there are limits to technology-enhanced self-sufficiency. Qatar will never realistically be able to grow enough wheat or rice and will always have to import meats and dairy. To meet those needs, Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund has set aside a $1 billion capital fund. It has bought land in Australia and Sudan, leased property in Kenya and invested $100 million in a rice seller in India. It’s looking into South America for sugar, red meat and grain.

Becoming self-sufficient in farmers is perhaps even more difficult. Qatar is already dependent on foreign labor for 94% of its workforce. An agricultural renaissance would require a social one as well. “Who will work those farms?” al-Attiya asks. “We need agricultural colleges and education. Marketing, waste reclamation and sewage treatment. Supply-chain management and the knowledge economy to keep it all going.”

Plowing Cash Into the Ground

Like its tomatoes, Qatar’s projects can flourish only in a hothouse environment–in this case, the one created by natural gas riches. “If there is a significant fall in gas prices, [Qatar] will have to revisit all of these plans and may have to scale back,” says Dubai-based energy analyst Robin Mills. Al-Attiya brushes those concerns aside. The project’s budget has already been approved by the government, which would otherwise have to subsidize imported food. “There will be payback from that $25 billion investment,” he says. “We have a strategic water reserve, we have mitigated our exposure to global risks, and we have intellectual property development and technology that can be exported elsewhere, profitably.”

With the world’s population expected to rise by a third over the next 20 years and demands for food and energy rising by half, investing in food-security technology is not necessarily a gamble, says Clemens Breisinger of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. However, he adds, “There might be smarter ways to invest that money than trying to green the desert.” He estimates that an additional $1 billion spent in sub-Saharan Africa could raise cereal production there by 3 million tons a year, 15 times more than Qatar’s annual consumption.

Sixty-eight countries are considered too arid for adequate agriculture, a number likely to rise as global warming turns wet regions wetter and dry lands drier. By using its wealth, says al-Attiya, Qatar is lowering the costs of research for everyone else. One such example is an experimental farm just off Qatar’s central four-lane highway. Three years ago researchers from the Ministry of Environment’s biotechnology center experimented with mixing salt-eating microbes into sabkha, desert soil that is twice as salty as seawater. Corn, watermelon and tomatoes were sown directly into the prepared soil and irrigated with treated sewage water. Masoud al-Marri, the center’s director, warns that they have not been tested yet for human consumption. Still, he does not stop a visitor from nibbling an ear of corn. It tastes sweet. Al-Marri smiles. “If we can succeed with this, everything will change.”n

FOR MORE IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE, VISIT time.com/breakthrough