VALENCIA — Sahara means “desert” in Arabic. A Sahrawi, then, is someone from the desert. That’s why the people of Western Sahara are known today as Sahrawi — both those still under Moroccan rule and those living as refugees in Algeria.
But it’s worth noting that the desert is not only sand and desolation. The Sahara is also water: the Atlantic Ocean lapping its endless shores, the occasional rains that bring sudden floods, the clouds and green pastures that some families follow with their herds. According to several scientific studies, this harsh land was once a savannah with abundant rainfall. Carvings of giraffes and cattle etched into rock still serve as reminders.
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Today, half of the Sahrawi refugee population lives far from the sea, on the Algerian hamada, a rocky desert plateau known for its brutal temperatures. Yet under the sand and stone, ancient fossil aquifers remain. These waters, born in a distant age, now feed the wells that nourish vegetable gardens. At a time when the future feels more uncertain than ever, an archipelago of small oases is beginning to take root. In the Sahara, there is life for those who seek it. For those who know how to care for it.
I remember reading a sign years ago in the Sahrawi camp of Smara: “Trees and plants don’t grow here, but people flourish.” It was a poetic reference to the high level of education achieved by the refugee population in such a hostile setting. The irony is that now, plants and trees are also flourishing, thanks to those very same people.
Good omens
While agriculture has a millennia-old history in Gaza, Valencia, and Oran, Sahrawi culture is historically and anthropologically nomadic and pastoral. Their homeland has always been mobile, stretching from villages by the ocean to pastures and oases in what are now Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, and the Sahrawi Republic. The idea that a society without an agricultural tradition, forced to survive in a rocky desert, could spark a peasant revolution might seem far-fetched. That would be the logical assumption. But we believe it has already happened.
This is not a distant dream, but something real and happening now. As real as the salad made from spring onions, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, carrots, and beets. I’ll admit it’s hard for me to say, but it tastes just as good, maybe better, than the salads I buy from my farmer friends in the Valencian countryside. How have a handful of desert women pulled this off in just a few years?
What does it mean to practice agriculture in the middle of a desert?
At the Maktaba Alhamra, or Alhambra Library, in El Aaiún, I was lent a copy of Poets and Poetry of Western Sahara. To understand the soul of a people, you must read the words of their poets. And their engineers too, because man does not live by verse alone. Taleb Brahim is an agricultural engineer with the Sahrawi Ministry of Economic Development. In a 2016 article, he described how the refugee population had become trapped in reliance on international food aid. And how, after years of progress, public health began to deteriorate again, with widespread anemia and other chronic illnesses.
That is why they began promoting national, regional, and family gardens. Not just to tackle economic and health challenges, but to face an even deeper one: the challenge of self-sufficiency. In just twenty years, hundreds of gardens have been planted. In a land battered by sandstorms and scorched by summer heat that can climb to fifty degrees Celsius. But how many of them have truly thrived? And what does it mean to practice agriculture in the middle of a desert?
On our first day meeting with the home garden coordinators, I spotted a small black and white bird. It was the hardy bubisher, whose name comes from the Arabic root bushra, meaning “good omens.” The first thing to understand is that the vast majority of these gardens are managed and cultivated by women. Many have been trained and supported by the NGO Center for Rural Studies and International Agriculture (CERAI), based in Catarroja in the Albufera region of Valencia. There’s no irony or coincidence in that. History shows that oasis and garden agriculture reached both the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb through the Arab communities of the eastern Mediterranean. That same connection is now being renewed.
Inheritors and innovators
Modern science supports and refines agricultural knowledge that once came from Phoenicia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Sahrawi peasant women are both inheritors and innovators of that tradition. Ghalia, Kafia, Muna, Adiba, and Yamila meet to share notes on their phones while passing around pastries, nuts, juice, and mint tea. This morning, someone distributes holy water brought from the Zamzam well in Mecca. Here, technology, labor, hospitality, and spirituality all seem to complement one another.
Up to 23 different types of seeds are handed out for planting: parsley, lettuce, turnips, beets, zucchini, carrots, chard, peas, tomatoes, onions, spinach, garlic, watermelon, and melon, among others. But of course, a proper garden also needs pollinators, flowers, and medicinal and aromatic herbs for tea and healing. Sahrawi ethnobotany could easily be the subject of an entire study, and we will come back to that at the end of this article.
Everything is cultivated according to agroecological principles, without chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
Palm, fig, pomegranate, moringa, and olive trees are planted around the perimeter. Alongside them grow desert trees such as acacias, both Algerian and Sahrawi varieties. No traditional garden can survive without shade. Everything is cultivated according to agroecological principles, without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, which would create dependency, trigger new health problems, or contaminate the aquifers.
That is why I am not surprised to see a ladybug nestled among the leaves. It’s a sign of a healthy, self-regulating system. And that is also why the presence of animals, chickens, goats, even camels, is not just welcome but vital to these oasis gardens. This reflects the agricultural model shaped by years of observation, analysis, practice, and refinement, as outlined in the 2020 to 2024 Strategic Plan for the Sahrawi Refugee Population.
Celia Climent, Vega Díez, and Laia Pons, who have worked with CERAI for years, report that between 2010 and 2021, 320 family gardens coordinated by women were already up and running. If you include national, regional, institutional, family, and other spontaneous efforts, the number might already be close to a thousand. This green revolution is modest, vulnerable, and slow-moving, but it is still a revolution.
