Summary

The design of an illustration and website for a project focused on changing monoculture, extractive, unsustainable date palm cultivation into biodiverse, cultivated, and abundant date palm agroecosystem. 

Challenge

Jesse Poland and his team of researchers are reimagining what date palm cultivation in Saudi Arabia could be. By looking back to traditional, time-tested growing methods and combining them with modern technology, we can create a system that is sustainable and economically abundant. I was asked to create a project website and accompanying illustration that shows how this functions and convince regional Saudi farmers of the benefits when compared to standard monoculture growing practices.

Research

I began with a diagram provided by Professor Jesse Poland’s research team which provided the framework for the elements present in the date palm agroecosystem. The diagram essentially illustrates a permaculture growing method where biodiversity is leveraged for system resilience.

This method of growing is not a new concept, and was successfully practiced for hundreds if not thousands of years by people of the region. Perhaps the date palm oasis cultivators of the past did not use the words mycorrhiza or nematodes, but they knew what healthy soil looked, smelled, and felt like and they knew how to nurture it. I searched for any publicized examples of successful date palm oases and came across Lab Oasis. Lab Oasis describes how date palm oases are not random naturally occurring phenomena; they are cultivated ecosystems that depend on sustainably drawing water from aquifers. With ground water levels depleted in many Arabian dryland environments, date palm oases are few and far between these days. The cultivated date palm ecosystems that Jesse Poland and team intend to create and research will rely on irrigation, but will aim to attain all other energetic inputs from self-sustaining, regenerating elements of the cultivated ecology. Manure and fertilizer will come from rotational grazing, mulch will come from palm trimmings, bee pollinators will be attracted with bee boxes and used as a source of economic resilience, fodder will feed the livestock and keep the soil healthy, intercropping will diversify the farmers income stream and increase the resilience of the system through biodiversity. Where there are gaps in the system, technological innovations will be made. For example: If there aren’t enough pollinators, drone pollinators can be employed to ensure a high-yield. 

Design

The illustration is designed to function optimally on the homepage of the  project website. Elements of the illustration are interactive and allow for a full project breakdown within the confines of one visual. Using the initial diagram as a guide, the date palm agroecosystem is reimagined. Using Rhino 3D, Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, and Midjourney Ai,  the cultivated date palm ecosystem took form. A time-tested system of growing that could increase economic resiliency of farmers and use practices that work with, not against, natural flows. Using a list of project goals provided by the Poland team, I crafted the story of what they are researching and why it matters. A simple branding scheme that embodies the energy of the project and creates a stylized experience of the information. By summer 2024, the website will be developed and shared here.

Result

View the website here. View the branding here.

Reflection

Saudi Date Palm is totally in line with my mission as a designer: packaging regenerative system design in a sleek, modernized, easy to understand format. It is exciting and hopeful that this type of thinking has reached agricultural research universities that have been trained to specialize in one thing. The academic culture rewards research that is hyper specialized, and this project is uniquely generalized. Projects that take a whole-systems approach are necessary for creating methods of food cultivation that are truly sustainable. All the answers for how to grow in this way lie in time-tested, localized, traditions. It is this generation's task to unearth the traditions of old, combine them with the technology of today, and reimagine a future that can abundantly sustain human life on this planet.