Read at : SUCCESS STORIES
http://unddd.unccd.int/success-stories.htm
Turkey
Flowers to combat desertification and protect biological diversity in Turkey
For a long time, cotton dominated agricultural production in the Harran Plateau of Turkey, despite this crops accompanying environmental problems. Cotton requires frequent irrigation, but the village is in a semi-arid region where water is scarce.
Consequently, the intense irrigation needed to produce cotton also brought about increased soil salinity and loss of nutrients, which led to a downward spiral of decreasing cotton productivity.
The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion and experts from Harran University devised a plan of action in which saffron production would become the key tool for combating erosion. The other objective was to restore and protect the saffron gene to this ancestral location.
After several soil tests, the Çütlük area belonging to Kuruyer village in the Plateau was chosen for the project. Its initiators had to convince the villagers to give up cotton in favor of the locally germinating saffron. Saffron had been cultivated here until it was displaced by the large cotton monocultures.
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Source: www.dry-net.org/index.php?page=3&successstoryId=24
The complete story is available at: http://www.dry-net.org/uploaded_files/Case2_EN.pdf
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DESERTIFICATION 