mahatir
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This neglect (sometimes not intentional) is due to population demographics. Most of Egypt's population lives in this region of Egypt:
Along the Nile basically (lifeline of Egypt since time immortal).
Used to have that many palm trees at least prior to 1991 and the Iraq-Iran war but it has millions of palm trees like neighboring Eastern Province of KSA which is also famous for having the largest palm groves in the world (Al-Hasa, Qatif etc.) It's part of the same geo-climatic region.
I am not rejoicing due to that despite the many Turkish trolls on PDF and their annoying habit of derailing most Arab-related threads later to complain about the non-existent "Arab trolling" when we put their nonsense apart as a reply, but it shatters this "Turkish army is invincible" nonsense. The truth is (real facts on the ground) that those Arab armies many of those same people have made fun of (Iraqi Army, SAA (even though I am no great fan of them), Saudi Arabian army, UAE army, Yemeni army) have proven themselves more in recent times and fought urban battles and conducted large-scale military ops, that Turkey has simply not been doing for quite some time. I am curious to see if they would be doing any better in Yemen (I have no reason to believe so less knowing history and how the Ottomans were defeated more than once in Yemen) but if you read comments, it sounds like the Gambian army being compared with the US army. If you read PDF that is, lol.
Anyway back to more updates:
Very good. Such slums should be torn down and a new environment should be built. Most of the societal challenges emerge from such densely populated areas.
Great to see focus on youth and education.
BTW good to see the increasing focus on organic farming. @mahatir it seems that focus on this, while there in the GCC, is less than what the potential shows? In KSA most of the agriculture is still done on land and sure there is a lot of relatively fertile land but transitioning to greenhouse tech in certain regions would be a wise step.
What is the situation in UAE given the difficulties with farming/agriculture inland? The majority is probably greenhouse like in Qatar which is the "worst example" in the sense that they barely have any traditional agricultural areas due to geography.
I believe that agricultural tech, seawater desalination tech and every technology and sector related to combating arid environments is something that we need to invest billions in. Look at the success that Israel has had on this front for instance and especially China of late. Huge areas in China have turned from permanent desert to agricultural lands using pioneering tech.
Tunisia is not doing as bad. They were one of the few success stories brother in comparison with the rest. Along with the likes of Yemen until that went down you know where thanks to the Houthi terrorist cult.
@HannibalBarca will explain here.
Netherlands Spain and China are the top 3 countries when it comes to Greenhouses and reclaiming desert lands.
Egypt, by the way, reclaimed over 1.5 million acres of agriculture land where they are growing all kinds of crops.
Saudi Arabia had also has a great experience in this field when the government along with private sector companies reclaimed around 3 million acres of land, at that time Saudi Arabia was exporting wheat.
The only problem usually faced is when you are relying on non-renewable aquifers which eventually leads to turning reclaimed land to barren ones.
We need a sustainable source of water and this can be done by desalinating seawater using renewable energy either nuclear or solar then it would be economically feasible.
The other method could be relying on using high-tech greenhouses in the desert to grow different crops , usually high-tech greenhouses use 60-90 % less water than a regular field and give you 6-8 times higher output depending on what kind of crop your growing .
Greenhouses use artificial soil so you don't have to reclaim desert land and the plant nutrients are provided by adding it to the water that feeds the plant through drip irrigation. If Saudi Arabia and UAE adopt using greenhouses then they can utilize their aquifers for few more decades by that time the cost of desalinating seawater will be peanuts .
Saudi Arabia is already working on turning all its desalination plants to run by solar energy and I am sure at some point the government there will start growing in greenhouses using desalinated sea water.
UAE has a big agriculture community in Al-Ain that consists of greenhouses ( vegetables and fruits) and palm trees but UAE main hindrance is the availability of land due to country's small size and labor force.
Agriculture requires the availability of land and labor force and Saudi Arabia has both especially well trained Saudi youth. If Saudi Arabia adopts a greenhouse national project like Egypt then I am sure many Saudi Businessmen will invest billions of dollars especially that you have experienced agriculture firms in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has the infrastructure and capability but it needs government support because these projects cost a lot to establish and requires a highly trained labor force.
If you watched the explanation of the project in Egypt you will see that they contacted the 2 top greenhouse manufacturing companies in Spain and China, even a Dutch company helped Egypt in building some of these high tech greenhouses.
An Egyptian company has actually set up a manufacturing plant to build high tech greenhouses after the TOT agreement they made with a Spanish company called Rufepa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiXmpR07Qys
The Egyptian president whenever he gives a speech or talks to the public always mentions the importance of saving water and utilizing the latest technologies to save water and increase agriculture output .
Imagine that Egypt will be producing 1.550 million tons of fuits and vegetables from only 20 thousand acres of high tech greenhouses by June 30th 2018, once the full project is completed Egypt will be producing around 8.5 million tons of fruits and vegetables on 100,000 acres of greenhouses.
When this project reaches full production stage I am sure other Arab countries would take same path in adopting setting up greenhouse communities like the ones Egypt recently built.
The video below is a brief explanation about this mega project , its mentioning the first phase which will be fully completed by June 2018. Egypt already finished 4,000 acres of greenhouses which Al-Sisi visited in Marsa Matruh and started growing fruits and vegetables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbfb_QSf0oA
Most people were happy seeing Assad shooting down an israeli plane but for me I was happy when I saw this project in Egypt and happier when Saudi Arabia announced it will launch its first solar-powered desalination plant in 2019 .
http://reneweconomy.com.au/saudis-b...scale-solar-powered-desalination-plant-82903/
Tunisia only has 8 million people yet it was close to bankruptcy and only has foreign reserves enough for 3 months worth of imports.
The Tunisian government is held back by extreme revolutionary forces who simply want the government to be subsidizing everything and are continuously accusing foreign and local investors/businessmen of being thieves.
This hostile environment has forced many investors to pull out of Tunisia, at some point they have to wake up and start working hard to build their country.
Foreign reserves Tunisia dropped to its lowest level in 15 years.
https://www.reuters.com/article/tun...els-equal-to-84-days-of-imports-idUSL8N1PW2YN
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180125-tunisias-foreign-exchange-reserves-lowest-in-15-years/
The Funny thing Tunisia was one of the fastest growing Arab countries at 7% just before the revolution.
The Tunisian prime minister is a well-educated Agriculture engineer with a PHD degree, he knows how to get things done but he is being handcuffed by a hostile opposition that does not want to cooperate with him. They always carry out riots and protests against any reforms he is attempting to implement.
The Tunisian prime minister is fluent in 4 languages and was a professor in various top French universities.
If someone with such qualifications fails in fixing Tunisia then you must be certain that the environment there is against anyone who wants to succeed.
