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The organic revolution in Egyptian cotton growing
When Dr Ibrahim Abouleish was shown 70 hectares of barren, stony Egyptian desert in the 1970s engineers and land specialists shook their heads. Uphill, miles from water and transport, they told him it would be impossible to cultivate. Abouleish however saw something different. Inspired by his study of biodynamic organic farming, he founded Sekem, an agricultural and social settlement that is known locally as ‘the miracle in the desert’. In the book he describes ‘fields planted with grains and medicinal plants and fruit plantations alternating with circular flower beds and avenues lined with decorative trees: oleander and bougainvillea, large bushes and trees with wonderfully coloured blossoms, and in between palm trees with their beautiful fronds reaching up to the sky.’ Today Sekem oversees a network of over 800 farms across Egypt and the Sudan, producing high-quality organic fruit and vegetables, herbs, cotton and other biodynamic crops. It has a thriving phyto-pharmaceutical industry producing high-grade organic herbal medicines and working with oncologists throughout Europe. In 2003 Sekem, and its founder (the author of this book) were awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize.
Concerned about aerial pesticide dusting, the community’s experiments with organic pest control were so convincing that in the early 1990s they persuaded the Egyptian government to convert 400,000 hectares — most of the country’s cotton crop. The book touches briefly on their first experiments tackling aphids, physapodes, white fly, spodoptera, pink bollworm and pectinophora without chemical pesticides, although you will find more detailed breakdown in another book. (Organic Cotton: From Field to Final Product, Dorothy Myers and Sue Stolton 1999).Describing chemically sprayed cotton, rather memorably, as ‘poisonous white gold’, in 1993 he and colleagues held the first International Organic Cotton Conference in Cairo. Having set up Egypt’s first Organic certification label they now run the successful organic cloth company Conytex and the book describes its early days and links with German textile company Hess-Natur.One of the features of this book is the author’s explanations of biodynamic farming and the hazards of chemical pesticides from an Islamic perspective. The work of micro-organisms, movement of sun and stars, and the growth processes of plants are often rooted in passages from the Koran. In 2003 Sekem was invited to share its ideas at the World Economic Forum, and its founder named one of the world’s Ten Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs. Sekem is a thoughtful account of its development. SEKEM A sustainable community in the Egyptian desert, Ibrahim Abouleish, Markus Kirchgessner, Floris Books, 2005, 240pp, £16.99. |
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