FISH FARMS AND GREEN FIELDS FLOURISH ON ARID GROUND IN ISRAEL

"Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly, but in Israel over the last decade, a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business." That quote is contained in an article in The New York Times which reports how fertile enterprises have grown on desert farms. Explains Prof.

Samuel Appelbaum of Ben-Gurion University: "We should consider arid land where subsurface water exists as land that has great opportunities, especially in food production because of the low level of competition on the land itself and because it gives opportunities to its inhabitants." In the past 10 years, about 15 fish farms have started successfully - producing both edible and ornamental fish in the Negev and Arava Deserts. On Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade, Amit Ziv runs a fish farm, raising about 15,000 fish at a time. Up to 500,000 cubic meters of water from the ponds are recycled for irrigation every year.