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The objective of the Manzanar project on the coastal deserts of
Eritrea is to have local people in villages use the technology
we have developed to produce food and wealth for themselves. Eritrea
is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per capita
gross domestic product of about 100 USD per annum. The life expectancy
of an Eritrean male is 45 years, and childhood mortality is unacceptably
high. Health and longevity are strictly correlated with wealth.
We believe that with successful completion of the various parts
of the Manzanar project, Eritrea will achieve self-sufficiency
in food and will experience a substantial improvement in its standard
of living.
The headquarters for our work is the Ministry of Fisheries in the port of Massawa on the red sea. Massawa is reputedly the hottest inhabited place on earth and on average has less than two centimeters of rain per year. Our challenge has been to develop a productive agriculture under extremely harsh conditions. The basic principle of our work is to use the intense sunlight of the desert and seawater to grow plants that can be converted to food for humans and products that can generate revenue. The main plant we use is the mangrove tree, Avicennia marina. The leaves of Avicennia are nineteen percent protein, and thus as fodder are more nutritious than alfalfa. We harvest mangroves by clipping small branches with a hedge clipper, wash off the salt crystals with seawater (because mangroves excrete salt through their leaves), and feed them to goats. On a diet of only mangrove material supplemented with fish meal, our goats and sheep thrive.
For
diversification we plan to also use cattle. Cattle cannot stand
the high temperatures of the Eritrean lowlands, but in the future
we plan to import breeding stock of the Indian Brahmin cow. The
Brahmin cow is the only cow that sweats, and can thus tolerate
high temperatures. From the known productivity of mangrove forests,
efficiency of conversion of fodder to meat, and the price of goat
meat and beef, we conclude that one hectare of mangroves can produce
up to 2,000 USD per year. This high productivity is due in part
to the fact that our growing season is 12 months a year.
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