XIX. To Kairouan and Beyond…

My colleague, Mehdi Ben Mimoun, who is a Pomology professor at the Institut nationale agronomique de Tunisie (INAT, Tunisian National Agronomic Institute), organized an amazing program of visits for me. Mehdi did part of his PhD at Davis, and Louise Ferguson connected me with him…what a blessing. He and his colleagues have been incredible hosts in Tunisia! He's the one to the left (of me and the camel) in the picture. 

I’ve visited orchards of all kinds, mostly citrus though, in many different areas of the country. Mehdi organized the tours, and typically the owner/manager/director comes and gets me (and sometime Mehdi) and takes us out for the visit, and often feeds us lunch as well!!

I’ve also had a chance to talk with a lot of people involved in citrus research, extension, and production, as well as seeing a lot of countryside. I gave two presentations at the Institute, on citrus in California, and small scale production in the foothills, and a second one on extension in California. They were very well received, and we had a really good discussion with a lot of questions both times...the questions lasted longer than the presentations!  It was all in French (including my presentations), so after a couple of hours, my French would start to deteriorate, and Mehdi would close the proceedings.

Just to let you all know that I was thinking about you, this is the front slide of the presentation. They liked the pictures of all of you. Dan, they thought you might be Tunisian, and they wanted to know if you had any Tunis sheep!

There were some people from the ministry of Agriculture at the extension presentation, and the director of Extension asked me to come to the Ministry and give the presentation again for their staff.  I gave that presentation the day before I left.  It was very interesting, about 30 people who work in the Ministry of Agriculture in the Extension division attended.  Most were very interested in what I had to say, and thought some of my ideas would be helpful.  A few were not happy to hear that our system is not centrally controlled, and that what I extend depends on my growers' needs, not what the government wants extended. However, I was pleased to be asked, as it indicated that they were open to new ideas.  And a number of the people attending asked if they could correspond by e-mail, so I think what I said got them thinking.  It was very interesting!

Back to Kaiouan and Regueb.  Monsieur Sahbi Majoub, who is a partner in one of the largest fruit companies in Tunisia, took Mehdi and me down to Regueb, via Kairouan. Regueb is in the southern part of Tunisia, but not the "far south". It is much drier than the northern coastal areas, and did not have much crop agriculture until the last few years - it was grazing land.

Then they found that there were quite large aquifers with high quality water, for Tunisia. All the water in Tunisia is somewhat to extremely saline, so good water is a relative term…especially compared to our water in the foothills. Anyway, about 12 years ago people started buying land and planting orchards in the area of Regueb and Maknassy. M. Sahbi has several, with citrus, grapes and stone fruit. We visited several citrus orchards…the oldest one, a 12 year old lemon orchard, plus many newer ones.

The trip takes you south, partly along the eastern coast below the Cap Bon Peninsula, then inland to the city of Kairouan, and then south again. Kairouan is an old, walled city, where the Arabs bringing Islam built their first mosque in North Africa. n.b. Maghrebis (North Africans) do not consider Egypt to be part of North Africa – it is much more closely linked to the Middle East culturally and otherwise. It used to be forbidden to non-Muslims, and is considered a holy city for Muslims. It is famous for carpet making, but I didn't really have time to check them out.

It was a bit of adventure early in the day, after zooming down the “autoroute” to end up in a walled city with cobblestone streets. We had breakfast at a tiny fitayra shop in the medina (old City). Ftayra is a kind of dough made from semolina that is worked like pizza dough, and then deep fried very quickly. It can have an egg in it or be garnished with onions, or just plain. It is only made for breakfast and the shop closes by 10 AM. The shop was tiny so there was a crowd of men standing out front eating the hot fried ftayra. We did the same, then washed the oil off our hands at the sink in the front of the shop.

After breakfast, we walked through to an open square, which Mehdi’s wife, who is an architect, helped restore. It was quite lovely (see photo right).

There is an old Arab tower/building that housed the well for the city, with a camel that walks around and around to turn a vertical wheel with clay jars on it to pull up the water. It’s very similar to the nuria water wheels in Egypt. I had read about it and it sounded horrible, because apparently the camel lives there its whole life. It was not as bad as it sounded. It’s open to the air and sun on one side, and very clean and neat. The water was fresh and good…I’ve not had any problems with drinking Tunisian water, which is very high quality. It is apparently a real tourist attraction, although we were the only ones there on that morning. The picture at the top of this post was taken there.

After our brief visit to Kaiouan, we set off for Regueb, arriving late morning at one of M. Sahbi’s farms. It had a few acres of citrus, but mostly table grapes. Then we stopped in town to order grilled lamb for lunch at a tiny hole in the wall restaurant.

The restaurant was next to this vegetable and fruit shop...I was blown away by the variety and quality of the produce, as Regueb seemed to be somewhat isolated...but there are good roads, and it was only about three hours from Tunis.  Somehow it reminded me of towns from my Peace Corps days, but I think there were a lot more amenities there than there were in the towns I remember!

The citrus in this area is still quite young, and I think the growers are just figuring out how to grow it there. The climatic conditions are entirely different than most of the areas where citrus is grown here, so they are used to dealing with a humid climate and all the attendant issues. The interesting thing is that they have maintained many of the same practices. I was surprised to see that they were disking very deeply between the rows, even into the root zone of the trees. It was very dusty, and given the propensity for winds, it was perfect mite habitat, and they had serious mite problems. When I asked the grower why, he couldn’t give me an answer other than that it was the way citrus was grown (elsewhere!).

So I (diplomatically – I’m much more diplomatic in French!) suggested that if he stopped cultivation and just mowed the weeds, he’d have fewer mite problems. Several orchards did not have windbreaks, and suffered flower drop and thus uneven fruit production. And some were very nutrient stressed, especially when the soil was very sandy. I able to offer some suggestions on windbreaks, mulching, and irrigation management to help them, which made me feel useful! It’s not that I know any more than they do, it’s just that I look at things differently, and can suggest practices that they might not have considered.

There were several orchards that looked very healthy, including M. Sahbi’s citrus. The major reasons why they are trying to grow citrus in that region is that there is good water and that since it has never had citrus it does not have mal secco, a disease that is deadly to lemons. Lemons are the highest value fruit in Tunisia, and it is very difficult to grow them anymore in any of the traditional coastal regions, so they are planting in the Regueb area.

After we visited a couple of orchards, we went back to town for lunch.  Lunch was cut up lamb cooked on a barbecue, seasoned with salt and pepper and lemon juice.  It was delicious...served in big bowls and eaten with your fingers! We ate at a big kitchen table in the back room of the restaurant, with five ag engineers who manage the various orchards in the area. Most of the orchard owners are absentee landowners, so they hire these young ag engineers to manage them.  They were all young men, in their late twenties and early thiries, and a couple had been Mehdi's students. They live out at the farms and obviously get together in town from time to time, but it was clearly a big deal to get invited to lunch and show us around their orchards.  Dessert was Clementine mandarins and navels from M. Sahbi's orchard. And they were really good as well.

We continued on to several more orchards...both young and older (12 years!) and then, as the sun was setting, headed back north.  We stopped again in Kairouan to see the mosque and so M. Sahbi could pray.  The minaret is lit at night and quite beautiful. We also stopped to buy the date pastries for which Kairouan is famous.  M. Sahbi gave me a whole box, which I shared with some of the hotel staff on the feast day and I brought some back to the States...some of you may get the chance to raise your blood sugar with a few!

We arrived back in Tunis around 8 PM...a long day, but very interesting and a real chance to see the Tunisian countryside.  Things were so well programmed in Tunisia that I am just now catching up on my posts...I never had time because Mehdi planned so much fo me.