I'm in Wadi Bani Khalid in Oman now and, this is huge.
There's 25 kilometers
of date palm overstory food forest at least
and a watering system that runs continuously.
It's probably ran for thousands of years.
The Bani Khalid tribe are the people who farm here.
We're literally surrounded by village.
And it goes all the way down
to a bigger bottom system that's just expansive.
We're going right up to have a look at
the source of the water if we can.
There's been a lot of water come through
in the last few days,
they've had a bit of a rain
so some of the watering channels have been blocked
and they've unblocked them.
This is a system that's in full maintenance,
full production and obviously it's completely sustainable.
It's been running for so long,
you couldn't even question that.
Let's have a look.
This is really something to see.
There are large mangoes in this system,
with the date palms and mixed fruit trees
all the way through,
terraces on both sides of the Wadi water flow.
There's quite a flow in this channel,
'cause they've had extra rain.
But this has been running for,
over a thousand years anyway and it never stops.
So these are systems you can look at
and you can work with and work out how they run.
That's the interesting thing.
There's even fish here,
quite a few fish in the in the Wadi flow, there.
And this system could be diversified
and increased in fertility quite easily.
Can see the height of the flood here
with the debris in this palm tree.
So you can see that came right across this whole system.
But the system's recovered and it's running.
So it's back in maintenance.
I'm sure there's a little bit more maintenance to do.
And obviously it's built to withstand the flood.
You can hear the frogs behind,
they're not worried, they're quite happy.
(frogs croaking)
Some quite big fish here.
(frogs croaking)
(rooster crowing)
Little sucking catfish here, cleaning algae.
A useful little element in any system.
Now here we have a rock barrage dam,
built by the locals, just out of stone
and it's actually meshed together with palm fiber.
It allows the irrigation to go from one side of the valley,
as a channel
and the other side from a channel.
It backs up this pool of water,
at the same time.
Very simple system,
considering the distance it travels,
it's extremely efficient.
And the time scale that's been running,
there's no question this is a sustainable system
and we should learn from these systems
and add appropriate technology and modern design.
And this could be the future of food for humanity.
Beautiful environment at the same time,
caring for the earth, caring for the people.
And we would need to return this surplus knowledge
so that everybody understands this is possible.
You can do it in dry lands like this,
you can do it anywhere.
If you'd look at the surrounding landscape,
it's definitely not
an abundantly verdant, fertile landscape.
It's just rock, more or less.
And quite a lot of that's overgrazed actually.
But here you have a date palm overstory food forest paradise
going for over 25 kilometers.
You've got to realize what that means
in sustainable system potential,
worldwide, not just here.
Looking within the system,
the potential for nitrogen fixing pollard is right here,
right in front of us.
Custard apple, mango,
no custard apple, yep.
An unusual heart shaped custard apple.
Bananas with fruit.
Grass forage cut for the animals,
which provide the manure.
Papayas.
Citrus, there's limes and I've seen oranges.
Could be all sorts, could probably grow pomelo here,
if it was available.
The channels just go off in all directions,
to water the gardens.
Bags of manure are ready to fertilize the fields.
There's a fig over there.
There's quite a lot of diversity already
and we could easily double or treble or quadruple
all the diversity I imagine,
it would not be hard.
This is subtropics, obviously by the species.
There's enormous amount of additions we could make to this
and it would be something like
you'd never imagine was possible.
All the main frame,
systems are in, oh,
so there's no need for mainframe design.
This is a mainframe design.
We just need to add the connectivity
between the potential diversity.
Good looking fig there, coming out of the rock wall.
Lucina right there.
Nitrogen fixing tree, a classic worldwide.
It's all here.
The potential's just sitting here.
And the landscape's framed in the background as,
not anything but rock really.
Orange is there in the background.
Doing pretty well.
Mulberry, here.
Fruiting really well.
Beautiful black mulberry.
One of my favorites actually.
Lady here's knocking down the Ziziphus.
To feed her goats.
That's the local juju, Ziziphus Spina Christi.
We're at the top of the productive system
but not the top of the water system,
still coming for a long way yet.
Catchments right up in the hills
picking up all this water for many, many kilometers,
almost a hundred percent runoff rock.
As we turn around,
you can see the main gabion backup pool
that feeds our food forest system on both sides
for over 25 kilometers.
(frogs croaking)
Gabion wall releasing on the right side of the valley.
(frogs croaking)
Down to the irrigation channel.
We're going to walk that channel,
down the valley back to the car.
(upbeat music)
Now we're back on the road.
Main valley.
On our way down.
We're going to drive the 20 kilometers,
we're not going to walk it,
of course we couldn't get it all on film
but just going to, trying to put the idea across
of what you're actually looking at here.
I'm going to keep saying it,
this is a sustainable system.
It's been running for thousands of years.
There's no way modern agriculture can achieve that.
Modern agriculture easily collapses within a hundred years,
often within 50.
Just can't hold the fertility.
What you have here, is a productive ecosystem
being managed around the water flow first.
Water, access, structural positions.
The village is on the edge, just above
and the animal nutrient is added to the system.
It's pretty vague actually.
It's pretty simple.
Incredibly simple.
It's all based around the gravity flows on the water
and simple nutrient cycles.
If you bring in the technology of modern nutrient cycles.
modern potential diversity, appropriate technology,
this goes up in scale
By the power of 10, I mean it's just,
it's incredible what the potential is when you look at this.
You can see the climate quite easily by the species,
there's mango, there's banana,
there's all kinds of citrus,
there's mulberry,
there's moringa in a lot of places around here.
There's custard apple,
it's subtropics.
Now you can pick these sustainable systems worldwide
and you can pull 'em to pieces
and see why they've lasted so long
and how then you can extend that globally
and end up in a world full of abundance,
in the appropriate locations for humanity to settle
and around the waste systems of humanity
all of these systems can be achieved.
Unfortunately, these systems have fallen apart
in a lot of places.
It's rare to come across one that's so big
and so long and so well maintained.
But I can see it fall into pieces slowly,
like I've seen others.
I'll film this on the way down from the car
'cause it's just too big to walk.
But I'd really like to get this message across,
that this is very much something
that we need to pay attention to
instead of extending into mass simplistic monoculture
we should be going into the intricate complexity
of productive ecosystems.
I think the backdrop says it all here.
It's quite classic.
Such an arid landscape.
So much hard service runoff.
Here's our tour guide.
Got to thank him for finding these sort of systems for me.
He eventually understood what I was after
and now I'm going to film it from the car.
(car beeping)
(upbeat music)
Well, there we go.
We've only come down to that valley there.
When you get to the bottom,
you realize there's quite a few branches like that.
It's not just one valley, one Wadi they call it here.
There are multiple Wadis feeding this system
and this is the largest system at the bottom.
I think I've done what I wanted to do,
I wanted to explain this.
We need to put it in lots of different forms
because these productive ecosystems in the dry lands,
they stand out, they're obvious
but they can be put together anywhere in the world
and that's what we need to do.
We need to do it quick,
we need to show this example
of permanent, sustainable productive systems
that go on in depth.
Remember, the most important thing in all this
is are we doing this?
You've got to enjoy the journey.
(dramatic music)