Page 206 - UAE Truncal States

The Traditional Economics

other small desert oases. From then on the tree is self-supporting
even if, as in some parts of the Lfwa, the water is fairly brackish.
Under the harsh desert conditions and because of the scarcity of
water only certain varieties of date palms thrive, and their fruit is
always much smaller than that of trees grown in the oases where
water is plentiful.
In the desert the owner of a garden was well satisfied if he
managed to replace dying palm trees by new growth and even add a
few young trees every year. Diversification of crops was not possible;
thus neither fruit trees nor animal fodder or vegetables were planted
among the date palms. In a very few locations a well might have
sustained the regular offtake needed to irrigate an entire area—as
opposed to giving a bucket full of water to each young plant
individually. But the lack of suitable material for the construction of
irrigation channels and above all the absence of proper top-soil
prevented agriculture on a general scale in the sands.
Since the early 1970s some owners of date gardens in the Llwa
have started to extend and diversify their gardens by building water-
tanks and cemented wells with imported materials, and by using
mechanical pumps. More recently the government of Abu Dhabi has
undertaken to transform agriculture in the area altogether by
preparing with the use of bulldozers large areas for plantations in
which the date palm is still dominant but grows side by side with
some other fruit trees and many trees and bushes which provide
windbreaks and shade.
The problem of protection from wind and foraging animals has
always been difficult in desert gardens. Before the advent of barbed
wire some date gardens were surrounded by fences made from palm
branches, but these would soon keel over and be buried in the sand.
Drifting sand is a formidable enemy to the desert garden. The best
protection was a strong low fence made of palm branches to run
along the entire crest of the high dune to the windward side of the
hollow in which the garden was situated.
Modern equipment such as steel sheeting and pipelines can now
be used to deal with this problem, too. A garden no longer has to be in
a hollow right by the best place for a well; it can be established on flat
ground at some distance from the dune.
But time will tell whether such modern aids, which make it
possible to farm in the desert on a very much larger scale, will not
also lead to a rapid depletion of the limited sweet-water resources of
these areas.

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