A Lesson From Harad and Al Khunn

It's been exciting how we've been receiving a lot of feedback from people the last few days on how our idea has already been attempted by the Kingdom. The fact is that the country never once invested in controlled-environment agriculture technology. About ten to fifteen years ago the country used a brute-force tactic on spacious regions of the desert as part of their industrial agricultural policy. The plan was to make the desert arable using underground water wells as a continuous resource for crop growth. The only problem was...that someone at the ministry of agriculture forgot that fossil water is a non-renewable resource.

The failed dream of Harad and Al Khunn is a testament of fossil water`s limited use (Source: Home).

The white circles represent regions where the lush green circles have dried up entirely (Source: Home).

The million (perhaps billion) dollar question now is: what will be the water source? As reports still have it the possibility of using the Persian Gulf as a water source is still questionable. Ever since Saddam's forces dumped over 11 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf in 1991, mercury levels have risen and dropped (at relatively low concentrations) over the last two decades.

Solar Insolation Measurements Reveal Farming in Saudi May Be Viable

A false-color image of solar insolation (below), taken by NASA between 1983 and 1993, show that introducing solar energy technology to Saudi Arabia may be the most profitable venture for the country since its discovery of oil in the 1940s. The idea here is to run controlled-environment farming units entirely on solar energy. 

Solar insolation measurements from 1984-1993 reveal that the rate of incoming sunlight make Saudi Arabia a preferable region for year round farming (source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1355).