Can a plant grow without soil? Many would frown at the question. But today's science tells a different story: not just a plant or two but commercial farming is possible without soil, because the nutrients plants need from the soil can come from other sources. We earlier saw hydroponic agriculture at the Japanese company Pasona, and later its successful use at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI). At first it seemed something for small spaces, ambition or hobby. The desert country of Qatar has changed that idea, proving that soilless farming in a controlled environment can succeed even amid hot desert gravel and sand.

Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, has no natural water bodies and very few animals and plants. It is now one of the world's richest countries by income per head. A century ago it was home to desert Bedouins; now Qataris are building their country like a dream and want to turn barren desert into a field of opportunity.

Qatar has always relied on imports for farm products. Money is no problem, but everyone knows there is no alternative to producing and storing food at home. Abdullah Salem Al Sulaiteen, founder chairman of the Sulaiteen Group, and Dr Ahmed Tawfik Mustafa, a well-known Middle Eastern horticulturist and agricultural expert, understood this long ago. Al Sulaiteen built a huge farm in the desert, and Al Fardan Farm, one of Qatar's largest, also grows produce with modern technology.

"I took the initiative for such a farm 20 years ago, out of the needs of the time," Al Sulaiteen said. "Farming is not easy. If someone comes into farming overcoming many obstacles, others can find the courage to follow. Many new technologies and techniques have come into farming, and using them ensures success." He said the farm receives support from the Qatar Development Bank, but far more support and patronage are needed.

Using the latest technology, Al Sulaiteen's farm produces 700 metric tonnes of fruit and vegetables a year, a large example for Qatar's fully controlled and costly farming. The farm has open fields and greenhouses, ornamental plant production and processing, research plots for growing vegetables and fruit in Qatar's climate, seed and seedling production, flowers and ornamental plants for city landscaping, a fruit and vegetable processing centre, a compost centre, and animals including deer and sheep. Each part of this model has been implemented over nearly two decades.

Qatar has 1,260 farms in all, and only 200 of them can sell produce after meeting their own needs.

The farm has five groups of greenhouses with six in each, 30 controlled growing areas, each 28 metres wide and 144 metres long. They grow capsicum of various colours, strawberries, cherry tomatoes of five varieties and three colours, cabbage, broccoli and other vegetables and fruit.

Underground saline water is desalinated for the greenhouses. Most remarkably, about 70 per cent of the water and mixed liquid fertiliser is reused through a special system. After desalination, all nutrients are added to the water in the water control room. It then drips through a thin pipe to the base of each plant; the plant takes what it needs and releases the water, nutrients are added again, and it is given back to the plants.

According to scientists, the advantages of soilless hydroponic farming are:

• maximum use and reuse of water;
• short crop rotations, with more than one crop in a season;
• assured high-quality crops on damaged, toxic or gravelly land;
• labour costs cut by half;
• workers can do the job in any clothes, which makes such projects effective in drawing a new generation to farming, since harvesting can be done without touching the produce;
• control over the nutrient content of water and growing media.

Policymakers, the report argues, should think about spreading this technology at low cost.

Every part of the farm is based on research and science, and Al Sulaiteen said work has begun on a research and development centre that will be the largest and first of its kind in Qatar's private sector.

Some 400 skilled workers from 12 countries work on the farm, including 60 to 70 Bangladeshis. Mir Hossain of Chattogram said he has worked there since 1992, built everything with his own hands and brought his two sons; back home, his land and house are doing well.

The farm follows two important steps of modern farming: soilless cultivation and vertical expansion, growing upward rather than outward. The farmers believe that in this way Qatar will one day be self-sufficient in farm produce.

Source: Shykh Seraj. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.