In some ways, village life on Oman’s Jabal Akhdar Mountain is the same as it has always been. Water still runs through the ancient aflaj channels. People still cultivate pomegranates, walnuts and grapes. Goats still go out to pasture, and the day begins and ends with the call to prayer. In other ways, life — and farming — is quite different. Over the past 50 years, Oman has developed at a dizzying speed, while climate change is also impacting agriculture. As change sweeps across these mountains, people are searching for ways to preserve and adapt these ancient oasis agricultural systems. At first glance, Oman’s Hajar Mountains are an unlikely place for agriculture. This is a dramatic landscape of rugged plateaus slashed by deep, snaking canyons. It’s almost always sunny, and when it does rain, water rushes across the rocky hillslopes and cascades down the canyon walls in magnificent torrents. But by channeling water from mountain springs and pools to terraced fields, and enriching the soils with manure from their goats, people have, for millennia, managed to grow an astonishing variety of food in a seemingly inhospitable land. “It’s the only place in the world that I know of where 1,500 years of irrigated agriculture … has not led to salinization,” says Andreas Bürkert, professor in agroecosystems research at the University of Kassel in Germany. “In Oman, we can learn how [to do] agroforestry under irrigated dryland conditions with very little water.” As the world grapples with unprecedented changes, Oman’s traditional…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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