Oman’s agriculture triumph over the years had been forged in hardship by the country’s relentless farmers. There are many success stories, with the number of creative farmers scattered throughout the Sultanate who transformed the rocks of the dead mountains and the scorching sand desert into green lands rich with fruit trees and productive crops.
Ahmed Al Zakwani is one of the farmers of Jabal Akhdar in Nizwa who has dedicated his life to transforming a mountain into a working farm. Guided by the primitive ways of his ancestors, he built upon their old methods in order to carve farms out of mountainsides.
To make this possible, Ahmed used wood and garlic to heat the stones to the point that it becomes red. Once he gets the desired rock temperature, he then pours cold water to break the rocks apart and once they are pulverised into small pieces, they remove them from the site.
Al Zakwani repeated the process over and over until the land is cleared and he was able to create terraces used for cultivating plants. He then fills these terraces with arable soil imported from Nizwa, Birkat al Mouz and some dams in Jabal Akhdhar. Once he gets the desired soil consistency, he grows pomegranate trees, olives, walnuts, figs, rose bushes, corn crops and some vegetable crops such as pumpkins, zucchini, eggplant, and other crops.
“To provide water for these plants, I broke the rocks of the wadi to build up reservoirs and dams. I worked on the construction of three successive dams, including two reservoirs with a basin, with a total surface area of about 3900 square meters and an average depth of 4.5 m, so that the total storage capacity of water is about 17500 cubic meter”, Ahmed said.
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