The pharmacist who sells onions: Palestinians go hydroponic in Jordan’s ‘Gaza camp’

In crowded Jerash refugee camp, hydroponic horticulture permits residents to develop their very own crops effectively in an arid nation – and supplies a stateless individuals with an earnings

Gaza Camp Hydroponics. | Shefa’a Qudah |

IMAGE: dris Abu Saleh in his rooftop greenhouse in Jerash camp in Jordan. {Photograph}: Sami Jarwan

Idris Abu Saleh has acquired used to being referred to as the chemist who grows the very best onions. Unable to seek out any work after commencement, now, aged 23, he’s supporting his household of eight from his home made hydroponic greenhouse in a refugee camp in northern Jordan.

“Individuals hold commenting on me being the pharmacist who sells onions,” stated Abu Saleh. “However I strive to not let that trouble me – it’s a job.”

Abu Saleh grows his crops in water relatively than soil. Inside his greenhouse, the air is humid as nutrient-rich water passes by rows of crimson lettuce, strawberries and thyme earlier than returning to an irrigation tank.

A resident of Jerash, the most impoverished of Jordan’s 10 UN-registered camps for Palestinian refugees, Abu Saleh had few alternatives accessible.

“I domesticate roughly 70kg of onions and 20kg of crimson lettuce each 40 days,” he says, strolling by his neatly organized 32 sq metre rooftop greenhouse. The earnings he makes – about £166 with every crop cycle – is sufficient to help his household.

Regionally, Jerash camp is called “Gaza camp”: it’s house to about 30,000 Palestinians whose roots are in Gaza however who fled to Jordan after the conflict with Israel in 1967.

A lot of the roughly 2.2 million Palestinian refugees residing in Jordan have been naturalised and luxuriate in the identical rights as different residents however the Gazans who arrived in 1967, and their kids, stay in limbo. They maintain no nationwide ID numbers, which suggests they typically can’t discover work, personal property or obtain any state advantages.

Abu Saleh was an early beneficiary of Senara, a hydroponic farming firm launched in 2020 by Mohammad Syam. Additionally a Jerash camp resident, Syam graduated with a nursing diploma in 2009 however, like Abu Saleh, had no Jordanian ID. Years of job rejections have been compounded by his father’s demise, which left him in monetary hardship and with household tasks.

Syam credit one other Jerash camp resident with the concept for his firm: “Abu Abdullah was the inspiration behind Senara, as he grew his personal meals on his roof.

“I then watched hours of YouTube movies on hydroponics, and after a yr of making use of for grants, I ultimately received grants from Unicef and Oxfam to launch the corporate,” says the 35-year-old father of two.

Since early 2022, Senara has taught 49 individuals to function hydroponic gardens and 34 how you can construct the programs. There at the moment are 164 rooftop greenhouses working, principally in crowded refugee camps, however some in extraordinary neighbourhoods as effectively.

One massive benefit of hydroponic farming is that it requires a fraction of the water that conventional agriculture wants.

The UN defines water shortage as one individual having 1,000 cubic metres a yr, and beneath 500 cubic metres as “absolute shortage”. In Jordan, a person’s annual share is simply 80 cubic metres, in keeping with Omar Salameh, a Ministry of Water and Irrigation spokesperson.

Jordanians entry water in keeping with a fastidiously regulated schedule, typically as soon as per week, and in rural areas this may solely be each two weeks, says Salameh.

Drought, rising temperatures and speedy evaporation is popping scarce arable land into desert, threatening Jordan’s long-term meals safety.

Final yr’s meagre rainfall additional depleted Jordan’s dams, whereas springs are operating dry at an alarming fee. Rainfall has been about half of its long-term common in recent times.

In the meantime, the tiny Center Jap nation’s inhabitants has surged, additional straining scarce assets, from 7.2 million in 2010 to about 11 million now. There are at the least one million Syrian refugees in Jordan.

Farmers have been more and more abandoning their fields as excessive droughts trigger yields to plummet. However hydroponic farming dramatically cuts irrigation prices, in keeping with Ahmed Mayyas, an agricultural marketing consultant.

Salim Abu Obeid, 21, had been refused work as a result of he had no official standing earlier than he began working with Syam in 2021. Now he takes care of two plastic greenhouses the place Senara shows its hydroponic programs and assessments out totally different crops.

Every morning, he rises early to verify the water ranges and provides fertilisers to rows of onions, lettuce, broccoli, strawberries and thyme.

No crop rotation is required – the identical plant will be grown repeatedly with none loss in yield. “With hydroponics, all I’ve to do is take away one seedling and substitute it with one other,” says Abu Obeid, who takes care of greenhouses with a complete space of about 1,400 sq metres.

The issue with hydroponics, the growers say, is the excessive prices upfront – most elements need to be imported. In line with the water and irrigation ministry, a single system to develop cucumbers can value 3,000 Jordanian dinars (£3,500), a steep sum for farmers. That partly explains why the observe has not been adopted on a wider scale.

However the advantages are nice. In addition to requiring a fraction of the water that conventional agriculture makes use of, hydroponic cultivation additionally takes up much less area, since crops are grown in vertical rows – extremely handy for a crammed refugee camp. And it grants one other scarce commodity for refugees in Jordan: monetary independence.

“It will be important for us to depend on ourselves by securing our personal job alternatives and producing our personal crops,” says Syam.

This text was printed in collaboration with Egab

Unique Article Right here: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/05/palestinian-refugees-jerash-camp-jordan-hydroponic-horticulture