How These Circles In The Sahara Help Farmers To Grow Crops In The Desert

What are these strange circles dotted for miles across this moon like landscape, what is going on here in this harsh environment, in this video we are going to find out!

To first understand what the holes are we need to get a picture of their location. Just sixty miles off the coast of the Sahara the largest hot desert on earth, there are a small cluster of islands despite, with similar arid conditions, despite the fact these islands called the canaries are so close to Africa, they are actually the territory of Spain, 2000 km away, geographically it seems a bit bizarre that these islands have anything to do with Spain at all and because of this they are actually quite different to mainland Spain, except that the official language spoken is Spanish.

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[LeafofLifeWorld]

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[jakthebean]

Hey Leaf of Life. I am always shocked by how well put together these mini docs are and how much info they pack. Please keep it up. You are amazing. Thank you.

[kolakevicius]

The only way to listen to your videos is at 1.25x speed.

[knucklessg]

The bright green trees are an absolutely stunning contrast to the black sand. I love how human engineering can heal the land

[SennaCrow]

I have a lot of notes here that might help, I think....

This reminds me of the porous clay pots that cool water naturally by up to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. I wonder if Arizona and other places dealing with heat could create similar with the clay pots?

Also, for the place in this video, if they increase water capture by just digging curled channels, it'll help get the ground to hold the water longer. Berms and swales help retain moisture and direct it, and part of that build involves planting trees on the berms. Tree roots strengthen / hold the soil in place and provide the initial part of a new habitat. (If you instead dig a straight channel, water will erode it badly. That's why a curling channel is so important, with deeper areas designed to catch larger amounts of water, and rocks set in certain places to slow the current and/or redirect it gently or with a specific effect in mind. Lining the bed of the shallower areas you wish to hold runoff will ensure slower drainage into the soil, too. This is done with the newspaper zai holes concept currently being used in West Africa. And adding sun-dried 1- to 2-year-old waste to certain areas helps increase biodiversity because of the nutrients that enrich the soil. Pair that with the "three sisters" technique, you'll be able to triple food and plant life by enriching nitrogen with one plant, and then doing other things with other plants. Dandelions here are considered a weed, but they pop up in droves when the soil is low in certain minerals. Most people where I live have forgotten that before and during the Great Depression, clover and dandelions and other ground cover / grasses were used because they were either edible by us or by our is edible and healthy. Helps the liver as well as the land.)

Anyway, back to water retention via berms and swales...

Once the water retention is going nicely and a good number of the trees have grown a bit, import something like beavers (or the natural equivalent for that area). Those animals will restore a LOT of the land in a quicker, shorter time, and you don't have to pay them overtime or workers comp, lol. Beavers will continue to naturally channel the ground and water, working through the night. They'll dig their own curling spirals into the land, outward from the larger bodies of water they help to dam up, which keeps rain and running water from eroding huge swatches of sandy ground, instead forcing it into smaller and smaller channels that the beavers dig outward from the main body.

Further, there are bits of technology that can help, too, in capturing water from even the driest air. An old one is the fog net. I think that's an old Ireland trick, collecting water from an upright net. It drips into a container to be collected. There are newer versions that work on a nano scale. Some collect up to 160 liters a day depending on the moisture in the air and the size of the net.

There are also other machines they're working on that I have no real clue HOW they work, but those capture air moisture, and that moisture drips down into a collection system, which is immediately drinkable and also useful for agriculture. There's a guy called Moses West who built his own version of the machines about 10 years ago and has deployed them to places overseas for the US military, for FEMA responses to hurricane catastrophes, and even as at home in the US, in places like Flint Michigan, after a train derailment poisoned all the water and ponds there. His company takes orders for building more machines, and there are other companies who have built similar machines or are crossing the technology with other tech so they can automate farming & re-greening. Moses West's machines are solar-powered and collect a LOT of water. I believe it was about 200 gallons a day or more...? I can't remember the minor details, but it was quite a bit. And as you empty the tank, it just refills.

There are arguments that taking moisture from the air would negatively impact the environment, but....even the Sahara has a lot of moisture in the air that can be captured. And earth is over 70% water. With global warming, more water is getting into the air than ever before....if anything, this an be an argument of how we're fixing and normalizing the climate worldwide.

A tip on helping to spread tree seed across a burnt area of land, or a somewhat more barren place, if you've got good soil that seed can grow in? Utilize a dog with a backpack full of various types of seeds for trees and other types of plants. Let the dogs run loose so they have fun going rampant for part of the day. They return after a few hours with bags empty or mostly empty---all that seed has been distributed across anywhere from a mile to a few miles. Then repeat. A simple GPS tracker would show everywhere the dog has gone so you can ensure wider coverage. I saw a documentary on a couple who did that after their forest burnt. The seedlings that had sprouted were EVERYWHERE five years later. Best part? No hard labor, no over time, nothing. Just a few dogs having a blast exploring, and the owners riding four wheelers to certain sites to deploy / pick up the dogs.

Oh! And last thing I just recalled. UV damages plants just like it damages us. Clear plastic canopy helps them to double in size and produce more food because it blocks the UVs but allows other light through. That's not only used with the De lux zai holes in East Africa, but a lot of farmers here in the US also use it on smaller farms and gardens.

When you begin to consider building types that improve the land, looking to ancient techniques used in the Middle East and elsewhere is also a very, very good place to go. Dovecotes are buildings constructed for birds to roost & poop in. The poop is nitrogen-rich, and it is shoveled out a few times a year & put into the land to be used for farming or plant growth. The birds are very low maintenance: just build the shelter and provide water (which would be the water catching system), and the birds will come. Better yet, they help with pests and anything they eat that has seeds will be deposited near the water, or farther from it. Thus, helping to naturally spread the greenery.

My last note here is on farming trees for wood (once they're getting established, that is.) Coppicing is a technique that will keep the land from being deforested while also providing sustainable wood for fuel and mulching and other uses. Japan uses the technique to keep from deforesting their land. It creates giant healthy root systems that sprout huge, very straight trunks that are amazing for building or other uses. In Italy, there's a tree that's over 4, 000 years old that's been burnt and chopped over and over using this technique. It's still alive and extremely healthy because of how it's maintained. Instead of chopping down trees to thin them, you prune them and make a cut to the trunk or base to encourage new growth. Certain stems are selected for early removal (to be used for anything from mulching to fuel to building material), while other stems are allowed to grow. New cuts are made periodically to encourage new stems, while certain of the older stems are selected for cutting a few years down the road. Usually 2 to 10 years, depending on the species. This means the roots stay alive for years and years, always supplying new shoots without being overburdened in trying to support a massive tree. It also means the tree provides a rotational wood crop that is sustainable and can be farmed over and over on a rotating schedule. I've seen the Japanese trees in a documentary, and the root systems I was speechless and in awe. HUGE root systems, sprouting nearly a miniature forest of their own. And the trunks that were rotated for cutting were anywhere from 50 to 100 feet tall (perhaps taller, I couldn't more accurately guess the actual scale from the video).

[PlasticBubbleCosplay]

Those circles remind me of part of the Great Green Wall project in the Sahel area of Africa.

[philippbobkaufmann]

Just as a correction: Juba II was king of Numidia and Mauretania in the *first* century BC.

[sumakwelvictoria]

Biochar pit and compost scraps, brush, leaves in there?

It will build up soil again. And it will retain even more moisture...

[ghulamabbasawan]

Such an informative channel. I can't understand this low count on subscribers.
Subscribed.

[utdchannel]

Hadir nyimak, mantap kawan👍 semoga sukses terus ya kawan

[edbollett]

Kind of amazing at some of the places where human occupancy is forbidden to protect delicate ecosystems as well as the wildlife they support. Several islands where human entrance is strictly forbidden. Strictly places where man is forbidden to rearrange everything under the sun..

[princesschariclea]

In one word amazing! Thank you Leaf of Life for sharing all these incredible videos about how we can repair our planet. And in simple ways too!

[shanshonagon]

Lanzarote’s climate is far different from the draugh of Sahara. As an island, is crossed by oceanic humidity retained by night and early morning lower temperature. Not so clear to replicate in the Sahara costline. But, why not to try?

[Noni]

This reminds me of the city of Petra and their desert farming techniques

[albertoo]

Ese tipo de hoyos se llaman Gerias y como bien comentas en el vídeo, sirven para atrapar y retener la humedad, gracias al picón

[Blaqjaqshellaq]

If they found dogs on the islands, that must mean that earlier people came there and introduced them...

[DRamos-jrxg]

Just to be historically fair, the population of the islands was "assimilated into the ground" and literally killed out in an all-out war with the invading Spaniards. Now the Islands are Spain; that's just history, it ain't or shouldn't be apologetic.

[Picci]

Visited Lanzarote last summer, close to Timanfaya volcano park. Looks like the moon, but they produce fine "volcanic malvasia" wines. The proof man can be the most powerful regenerative force of the planet, instead of the most destructive

[JonathanReynolds]

I’ve walked through the forest of Garajonay at the centre of the Canary Island of La Gomera.

[pallawichhabra]

Such documentaries are like a silver lining at the end of the tunnel