A letter about agriculture in a hard climate — the species that survive here, the technology being built to feed a desert, the water problem underneath all of it, and the growers doing the actual work. Written from Dubai, about the whole Gulf.
Form not loading? Subscribe here instead →
Once a fortnight. No spam, ever. Unsubscribe in one click.
Not a press-release roundup and not a global agtech blog. Specific, regional, and written for people who actually grow things — or build the tools that do.
Date palm, Ghaf, Sidr, salt-tolerant crops, fodder. Species, cultivation, yields, and why some things thrive on almost nothing.
Vertical farms, hydroponics, controlled-environment growing, soil sensors, automation. What's working, what's still a pitch deck.
Drip efficiency, treated wastewater, desalination economics, groundwater salinity. Every other decision here answers to this one.
Waqf orchards, endowed groves, and the long regional habit of planting for people you'll never meet — history that still shapes land today.
Farmers in Liwa, nursery owners, irrigation crews, researchers. The people who keep things alive through a Gulf August, in their own words.
Before there was a country here, there was the Ghaf. It is evergreen in a place that gives it almost no reason to be — holding its leaves through summers that strip everything else back to bone. People sat under it because it was the only shade for miles, and because it was the only shade for miles, they sat under it together. Decisions got made there. That is most of what a meeting place is.
The UAE named it the national tree in 2008, and in 2019 made it the symbol of the Year of Tolerance — a tree standing for coexistence, which sounds like a stretch until you remember it was the room everyone shared. It can live around 120 years. Cutting one down is against the law. Which raises the question this issue is really about: what does a plant have to do to earn that kind of protection, and what else growing here has earned it without anyone noticing?
Continues in issue 01 — subscribe to get it.
The most interesting agriculture in the world is happening in the places least suited to it. Countries here import most of what they eat, grow food in conditions that shouldn't allow it, and spend serious money on the problem — and almost nobody writes about it properly.
So this is that: a fortnightly letter that takes regional agriculture seriously, without the press-release language. Some issues will be about a tree. Some will be about a pump, or a policy, or a person who has been farming the same plot for forty years.
Written from Dubai. Independent, not sponsored by anyone, and replies are read by a person.
Join early. The first issues are where the shape of this gets decided, and subscribers get to argue with it.
Subscribe — it's freeOnce a fortnight. Unsubscribe in one click.