Desert Agriculture: 
Problems and Results in Israel 
MICHAEL EVENARI ann DOV KOLLER 
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel 
Phytogeographically and climatically, 36% (9,468 km?) of the 
area of Israel belongs to the Mediterranean, 16.3% (4,288 km?) to 
the Irano-Turanian, and 45% (11,835 km?) to the Saharo-Sindian 
territory (17, 18). This means that even the best agricultural re- 
gion of Israel, the Mediterranean region, is semi-arid, and the 
rest of the country 1s classified as either arid or very arid. Conse- 
quently, our agriculture had, from the very beginning, to deal 
with arid zone problems, and we can consider the whole country 
as a large-scale experiment in problems of aridoculture. 
The ever increasing population of Israel has prohibited the lim- 
itation of our agriculture to the best regions, and forced its 
extension into our Irano-Turanian steppes and Saharo-Sindian 
deserts. 
That this was really done is clearly seen from the figures for 
the Negev* (Table 1). 
Whereas in the northwestern part of the Negev agriculture is 
based on supplementary irrigation with water piped there from 
northern Israel, it was decided that in the rest of the arable Negev 
all agricultural practice will be based primarily on the use of local 
* The Negev is the southern part of Israel and roughly comprises the 
Jrano-Turanian steppe region in the north and the Saharo-Sindian desert 
region in the south. The whole region receives only winter rainfall. The 
yearly average for the Irano-Turanian region fluctuates between ca. 150 
and 300 mm, for the Saharo-Sindian between ca. 25 and 125 mm. As in 
all desert regions, rainfall is very uncertain as to amount and season. 
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