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The decades-long quest to end drought (and feed millions) by taking the salt out of seawater
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Wired
Posted: April 23rd, 2018
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/charlie-paton-seawater-greenh...
The world isnt short of water, its just in the wrong place, and too salty," says Charlie Paton so he's spent the past 24 years building the technology to prove it. Paton is the founder of Seawater Greenhouse, a company that transforms two abundant resources sunshine and seawater into freshwater for growing crops in arid, coastal regions such as Africas horn. His latest project [is] in Somaliland (an autonomous but internationally unrecognised republic in Somalia). On a 25-hectare plot of desert land close to the coastline, hes building the regions first sustainable, drought-resistant greenhouse. Using solar power to pump in seawater from the coastline and desalinate it on site, Paton is generating freshwater to irrigate plants, and water vapour to cool and humidify the greenhouse interior. Less than a year after its launch, this improbable desert oasis produced its first harvest of lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. This year he plans to build an on-site training centre to teach local farmers how to grow greenhouse vegetables. The structures modular design will enable farmers to adopt their own one- to five-hectare plots the dream being a network of connected, drought-resistant farms running across the country. One of the exciting things is that it can work all the way along our long Red Sea coastline, bringing new sources of income in arid, pastoral areas, Shibeshi says. If you have a greenhouse, you arent worried about whether theres rain or no rain.
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