Project Desert Farms

Project Desert FarmsTeam O.A.S.I.S

Kashyap & Chintan Gohel, Charles Otieno,Sabrina Mitha and Sila Kapting'ei

and

YOU

1. To provide a permanent and permanently sustainable source of

potable (drinking)water.

2. To provide a manageable and sustainable source of food for the grow-

ing population (of 9B people by 2050).

3. To provide adequate low-cost housing for everyone, helping in

population planning (family planning) hence raising standards of living.

4. To create useful employment, especially for the unemployed people liv-

ing on the streets and slums.

5. To fertilize soils of the vast arid and semi-arid lands and hence estab-

lish watercatchment areas by reforestation programs and reverse global

warming

Objectives

How? The Process:Stage 1: Transport

1. Clean filtered seawater is tapped from the ocean, 600m+ from

the coastline and piped far inland to the Desert Farms.

2. Part of the water goes into the trench-lakes while part goes to

the Desalination plants cum Housing in a raised tank.

3. Salt-water fish is also transported from other lakes and oceans

and introduced to the trenchlakes.

4. Fast-growing seaweed is also transported from the ocean and

grown in the trench-lake.

How? The Process:

Stage 1: Transport

Stage 2: Desalination

Takes place on triangular shaped housing structures. Inside are 1

and 2 bedroom apartments while the exterior walls and the space

between two apartments is where desalination occurs.

Stage 2: Desalination

The tank that receives water from the sea has a pipe connected to all the

desalination units. Water flows through these pipes at a predetermined rate

(by varying size of aperture). It overflows slowly from a tray on top of the tri-

angular structure (a), trickling down the sides (b). Sunlight passes through

the plastic one-way film and is trapped inside, heating the water (c).

Stage 2: Desalination

The salty water evaporates and the moisture condenses on the inner side of the plastic, and is

tapped off by means of trays. Condensation takes place because of a sheet of cool water flowing down on the

outside of the one-way plastic film. The condensate is then tapped off using trays at every interval.

The key differences that allow the water flowing inside to heat up but the outside one to stay

cool is 1-The water flowing outside is flowing faster since it flows on plastic sheet, which is smoother than the

surface of the compressed earthblock wall. Hence it has little time to heat up under influence of the sun. 2- The

water outside is open to atmosphere, hence remains cool at all times by evaporating a bit. The one inside has

heat retention due to one-way tint film reflecting back heat. Temperatures inside are about 88 degrees celcius.

Stage 2: Desalination

Excess water drains out to the evaporation pan between the two

housing apartments, and is evaporated to dryness and water collected.

The salt is later recovered by use of manual scraping and sold to

purifying industries or for home consumption. Thus it forms a source of rev-

enue.

Stage 2: Desalination

The desalination housing units are

oriented in the general direction of

the sun. The slope of the roofing

has been designed such that min-

imum shadows are cast, hence

maximum distillation is carried out

per day, per area of land. The an-

gle of 60 degrees (10am in the

morning and 2pm in the afternoon

has been selected as the optimum

after long trial and evaluation.

Thus the unit receives maximum

solar radiation between 10 and 2.

Stage 2: Desalination

1. The land is watered with slightly diluted saline water and salt-re-

sistant grass grown, e.g. Pemba grass.

2. Slowly lowering salinity, different types of grasses are grown and

cut repeatedly mixed with cow dung forming compost, which

when mixed with sand, produces a thin layer of topsoil. Seaweed

harvested from the beaches can also be added to provide

nutrients and act as mulching, reducing evaporation rates of

water near the roots.

3. A border of trees is planted to act as windbreaks and a source of

shade for the plant nurseries.

Stage 3: Land Reclamation

Stage 3: Land Reclamation

Lake, farm

and windbreaks

Land undergoing reclamation

1. The fish from the lake are bred and serve as a source of food.

(Fish farming).

2. The seaweed provides shade for the fish, and also provides a

growing source of soil compost/manure to grow crops on. It also

acts as good mulching when wet, and a source of biogas for

cooking when mixed with cowdung and fermented.

3. Plant and tree seedlings are nurtured on the leeward side of the

long lake. Behind the nursery is the farm, protected with tree

windbreaks.

Stage 4: Farming

This project does not ignore the fact that vast amounts of water in

arid areas is wasted as surface run-off.

Therefore, the outside surface of the desalination housing units

have channels in which rainwater collected from the walls is channeled and

stored.

Also, channels are dug in the ground to encourage floodwater to

go into separate empty trench lakes to act as reservoirs.

Stage 5: Rainwater and Surface run-off Har-vesting

Stage 5: Rainwater and Surface run-off Har-vesting

1. One acre of desalination housing produces upto 10650litres of

distilled drinking water every day per acre of land, worth 132,000ksh

(or 1550 US$) at current market price, for FREE. This is enough to

sustain at least 200 people at 50 liters each, an improvement from

the 5 liters an average African gets daily after struggle. If this

distilled water is dedicated to drinking and cooking only, around

20litres per person, the number who can live on this climbs to

528 people! This improvement from the 5 liters an average African

gets daily after struggle.

Statistics and Figures.

2. The trench lake is 9million litres capacity, 4m deep, 6m wide at

top, and 450m long. Needless to say, that's a LOT of fish, seaweed

and water. This can comfortably be a source of food-protein, espe-

cially in communal catering.

3. On the same acre of desalination is the housing structures which

can support upto 60 single child families (180 people), or 114 sin-

gles (114 people)

Statistics and Figures.

This project is based on the module system, one module consist-

ing of a desalination housing unit, a trench-lake, a farm and a reservoir

tank. Upon obtaining more resources, another module can be added and

water feedline obtained from the main pipeline from the sea. Expansion is

readily and easily undertaken.

The project, since it addresses the issue of low-cost housing, can be

implemented practically everywhere, in schools to be residential

dormitories, in villages etc.

Therefore our future vision is to see the first desert city being

developed, overtaking the current city projects ‘Tatu’ and ‘Konza’ in Kenya,

not as a technology city, but a green city.

Future Vision

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

1. What are people living in the houses provided with? A bed, cupboard, table, shelf, sofa, 3 chairs, washbasin.

2. What are the other buildings available in the desert city?A library, hospitals, community centre (drama stage, traditional wrestling

arena), schools, playground/football field, religious centres (church, mosque, temple).3. What jobs will the unemployed people shifting to the farms get?

Besides the main agricultural aspect, people will be needed for mainte-nance of the different sections, transporters, builders, casual laborers, engineers, and many more. All types of people will be needed since this project is a holistic one.4. What form is their remuneration?

This can be open to the prevailing demands and situations. Various options consist of discounted housing, water, food, schooling, health, etc.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

5. How will you get the seaweed to the lake you have created? Using the highway, several tankers (or decommissioned petrol tankers)

are driven to the site with seawater and live seaweed inside them. The seaweed is then dumped with the seawater into the trenchlake and once the seaweed cultivation is started, once every 3 months a new species of seaweed or fresh supply can be brought. In the beginning of the project, dead seaweed deposited on to the beach can be brought in to the farmsite to start off the reclamation process as fertilizer.

6. How much money will it take to build a desert farm, and a desert city? Feel free to give statistics and figures.

A good part of this project involves low cost materials which should bring down the full cost by a significant margin. A trial project with the 1000US$ should cover the cost of all materials (79800ksh/938US$), while labour will be provided by our team members, and the land by our university.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

7. How will you go about funding the building of this desert farm and city? We shall, with your help, earn the funding from Thought For Food

foundation and construct a working model of 10 modules, after which we shall approach various stakeholders in the market such as water pump manufacturers, contractors, architects, cement manufacturers, farmers, machinery builders, etc to start a joint venture capitalist project, except this will be a part of their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Some have already considered investing in us.

8. How long will the above city take to build? Once the designs for the module are sent, shop drawings approved, the

manufacture of the parts should take less than a week. Assembling them and commissioning will take another week. Therefore, assuming we have to go small scale, a single module, it will take us no more than 2 weeks. If we plan to build more, gov-ernment permits and other legal matters aside, the rate should drop to 6days per module. If we hire workers and machinery, 10 modules can be made every 6days, hence in a year, we can finish 520 modules (settling 1560people a year!)

9. What species of trees does this project aim to plant? We plan to introduce coconut trees (since they do well in sandy soils with some percentage of salinity in the water). Jatropha and other hardy bushes too, since Jat -ropha is an excellent source of oil which can be best used to manufacture soap for sale(economic activity).

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

10. How do you plan to get these trees ready by the end of the creation of the farm? We plan to use a concept called extended nursery system, where we plant these trees a few years before the beginning of the project into large clay containers. When the tree is nearly fully grown, we transport it to the new site, break the pot and plant the tree. Thus ready-made fully grown trees can be continuously supplied.

11.. What food crops will you plant? Yam, arrowroots, cassava. These can be in the initial stages to gauge their growth.

Later on with stabilized water production, maize, bananas, potatoes and wheat can be tried. We shall also try a range of new food crops to divert people from overdependence on staple foods.

17. How is the project going to solve the problem of current unsustainable population growth?

Prevention is better than cure. With looming food security crisis in future, it would be folly to raise a large family, especially when living below the poverty line, as is the case with many developing countries, especially Africa. According to UN statistics, the population growth rate in Africa is one of the highest, and the overall population is expected to grow more than double its current size, by 2025, over 1.4Billion people. Therefore, all residents of Project Desert Farms are greatly encouraged to adhere to family planning. We see it a wise decision to bring children into the world only when the food and economic state of the parents is stable, hence lowering child mortality rates.

We need your In-put and Support!

We need your Input and Support!

1. Interact with us, know more about our project, ask questions, critic it and improve our ideas such that we may succeed in helping the unfortunate.2. Sponsor gifts to give for attracting audience to our cause.3. Talk about the idea with friends, colleagues, co-employees, family and share updates of the project. Raise awareness of what we want to do to save our earth!4. Like the facebook page http://facebook.com/ProjectDesertFarms and twitter #ProjectDesertFarms and invite more people to join the ever ex-panding and exciting network of Desert Farms, easily done through our STALLS. Simply approach a volunteer and all will be explained. :D

5. Last but not least, VOTE FOR US on MAY 1st-to-10th, and before the vot-ing starts, gather everyone you know and encourage them to do the same. Overall, remember, we are doing this for service to humanity, be a part, even if it is a small one, of this step forward. =D

Thank You.....