Israel

Can a sand dune be turned into farmland?

Around a thousand years ago, people along the coast of Israel did just that. They dug farming plots down into the dunes until they were close to the groundwater and built sand berms around them.

Pure windblown sand holds little water or nutrients, so it was mixed with soil, ash and organic refuse from nearby settlements. This changed the sand enough to grow crops in it.

Researchers describe these systems as some of the earliest known large-scale attempts to farm directly in sand.