My father is a man of the earth; that is, he knows how to analyze soil by sight and what to add to make it soft and rich and fertile. When I was young he would brag that he could turn the Sahara into arable soil if he were given a chance (his plan involved some B-52 bombers that would spread compost and rock powder over vast tracts of land). Obviously it was a little impractical but I always liked to imagine it anyway, since desertification is such a seemingly unsolvable problem. This video, however, makes me think that perhaps my father wasn't so far from having a solution as I thought he was. Hearing about a land that was salty and dry that is now producing dates and figs is a good antidote to all the other stories I've been hearing lately about dying honeybees and global warming.
