Under the hot Aqaba sun, an all-female team of recent Jordanian university graduates took turns planting lettuce and bok choy seeds in the desert soil. Just minutes earlier, they had prepared a special compost blend — a mix of peat moss and ground coconut shell — which allowed them to turn the otherwise arid soil into fertile ground.

The 15 female engineers were participating in their first site visit of the Sahara Forest Project (SFP) research center in Aqaba, as part of a 12-week training program to boost innovative practices in sustainable agriculture in Jordan. The training program is a joint project between Hussein Technical University and SFP, a Norwegian NGO focused on providing fresh water and food in desert regions.

For many of the participants, this was their first experience seeing what they had learned in university outside of a textbook. 

“For me, this was the first time seeing agricultural fields like this,” Dania Shahrori, a 24-year old graduate in water and environmental engineering, told Al-Monitor. “It’s unique to see these new techniques in Jordan,” she said.