WEBVTT

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This London street art is the work
of school kids encouraged to develop

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creative and technical skills.
Now right across the world

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young people are told that if they do that, the jobs
will follow. But what if there aren\'t enough jobs

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to go around.

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[music]

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Hassan is giving orders again. He\'s telling

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the hired hand how to lay the irrigation pipes.
Haxard(ph) has worked in agriculture all his life

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like his family before him. But Hassan,

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well he\'s a little new to all these.
I can\'t say I\'m a farmer.

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Originally, I was not a farmer.
Farmers have experience.

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I just don\'t have. Hassan
is no weekend farmer,

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no city turned landowner.
He\'s one of the new breed.

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His story, the solution
to one of globalization\'s

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greatest dilemmas. Or is it?

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Back home, you might think
Hassan was a simple man.

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He lives with his new wife and
children in a modest two room home.

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Yet he lives a life that his old friends might
envy. When he goes back to his place in the city,

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well, he likes to show off a little.

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My neighbors back there in the city envy
me and can only dream of what I have now.

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I took some apricots from here
and give them to my neighbors.

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They ask me where I got them? I told
them from my land in the desert.

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They wanted to get land too
but now they can\'t because

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it\'s very expensive. So they
can only dream of having land.

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Hassan is a university graduate.

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His degree is in business. But he
doesn\'t commute to an office everyday.

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His place of work is a farm
200 kilometers from Cairo

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and it isn\'t even land in
the fertile Nile delta.

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Strangely it seems Hassan has
chosen to farm in the desert

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and he doesn\'t always get it quite right.
I know, I\'m late planting

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but there is nothing I can do. Actually
there are some benefits in the laying.

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When you plow the field, it is
exposed to sun shine which sterilize

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the soil and kills the
fungus and bad microbes.

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The next morning a bus ride.

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Today Hassan is being trained

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in the most basic art of all
around here, irrigation.

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The instructor talks
about conserving water,

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of vital importance in a country
that\'s almost all desert.

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I have been flooding the whole field

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but today I learnt how to give
water to just the green areas.

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So while usually, I give
several liters of water.

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Here they told us to water according to
the size of the green area and the size

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of the plants.

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Hassan lives in Al Yasha. What
looks like a normal village.

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But take a closer look.

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These are not

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the farmers, they appear to be.

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The truth is, it\'s not just Hassan. Almost all the men
and many of the women in the village are graduates.

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And it\'s just not here.
Throughout the desert,

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east and west of Cairo, dozens of villages
are made up of thousands of graduates

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who come to farm. Many without
any farming experience at all.

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We have no idea what we would do.
Any little problems

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become a burden for us. The land was sandy.
The first crops we planted

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just dried up. Then either the water
or the electricity wouldn\'t work.

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So if it was a hot day, the
plants would dry up completely

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and then you would plant again and again.

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A desert without electricity or water,

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no idea of how to farm, what are
Hassan and the graduates doing here?

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[music]

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Cairo is where Hassan came from.

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Few capital cities better represent
the modern globalized metropolis.

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Its cafes

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are teeming with young people. They make up
a massive percentage of Cairo\'s population

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as they now do throughout the middle
east, two out of three people

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are under the age of 25. In Egypt,

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many other newly educated children of
poor families pouring out of universities

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and vocational schools.

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Hundreds of thousands are graduating every year from
the education system and from vocational schools

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and over several hundred thousands of
jobs have to be created every year to,

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to meet the intake of these graduates.
And it\'s a tremendous challenge.

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It\'s a tremendous burden for, for government.
You find that youth are perceived

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as one of liability.

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The people are in danger of being seen as
liabilities by the government, the young people

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like 25 year old Tareq.

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What I earn is barely enough to
meet my minimal personal needs.

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I can\'t even think about taking steps like
marriage or moving into my own apartment.

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Not at all.

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Tareq\'s plight could have been Hassan\'s.
He is in fact

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a land surveyor but after years of
trying to find work, he now takes

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whatever low paid job he can find.
His fate, the one Hassan avoided.

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Most of my generations specially my
friends are in the same situation.

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That limits our way of thinking. We can\'t
think of that future because we know at best,

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we can only earn enough to pay for
our basic needs. There is no jobs,

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no money, no thinking. What can we do?

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Like other countries, Egypt has seen

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education as a route out of poverty
and for a long time it was.

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Since every graduate was guaranteed
a secured government job.

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Today, the government can no longer
afford to employ every graduate yet many

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continue to believe it will. You
have an entire generation who\'s been

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raised on this notion of dependency. So
now you have to change this whole concept

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with them and, and, and have them

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take on the responsibility
to find their own jobs

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or to find their own umm… self-employment
opportunities, right. So this is a whole new world

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to many young people. But where

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do those opportunities lie? For a timed
Hassan looked to private business

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but then the vagaries of globalization
caused him to rethink his plan.

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I was working as an accountant

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in an air-conditioned building. I had
a good salary, a comfortable job.

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But when China started to export things to
Egypt, our industry became less competitive

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and my income started
to decrease once again.

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So I began to think maybe agriculture

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was a better option for me than business.

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Hassan\'s personal decision was
more momentous than it seemed

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perhaps even to him. For generations,

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young country dwellers have seen their
future in the big cities not on the land.

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Late in the 20th century, many
governments encouraged the trend

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contributing to mega cities like Cairo.

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Hassan was reversing the tide
of history and he wasn\'t alone.

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[sil.]

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In (inaudible)

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, the same village as Hassan
now lives, meet Badr.

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He has taken the same decision, a
graduate returning to the land.

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But unlike Hassan, Badr,
new what he was doing.

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He\'d grown up in farm country
and studied agriculture.

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If someone came from a farming background
like me it was easier for him to adapt.

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A lot of people would ask me for my
advice and I was happy to give it

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because it was good for them to understand
what to do in a place like this.

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But here in the desert, the
only land they could afford

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even the experienced Badr found it tough.
Back at home

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Badr\'s wife Samia is helping their son Mohammed
with his homework. She\'s reminded of one

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traumatic experience.

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I was pregnant with my son Mohammed
and went into labor. Of course,

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there was no hospital or doctor in the
village. I asked my neighbor for help.

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We decided to go to a nearby city
but we were running out time.

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We couldn\'t find a place
to deliver the baby

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and finally on the way, I
gave birth to Mohammed

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in the desert. As for Hassan
building a life in the desert,

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well, he\'d been warned by his first wife.

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When I took the possession of the
land, I drove my wife to the spot.

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My wife looked out of the window from the car and
said, where is the land? I can only see the sky

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connected to the desert.
I said, this is it.

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Well, she refused to even get
out of the car. Hassan\'s wife

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believed he made a terrible mistake.
But was she right and who

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or what had lured him here?

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It was 20 years ago

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in Cairo that Hassan\'s life changed.
He was just reading a newspaper.

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A national newspaper

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announced that the government was trying to
solve unemployment problem for young graduates.

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And there were several options.

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One was to take out a government
loan and start a business.

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Another was to get a car but I
didn\'t like the loan or the car.

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I preferred the third option
to buy some cheap farmland

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that you repaid over 30 years.

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What gave Hassan his chance, the government
could no longer afford to guarantee jobs

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for all Egypt\'s graduates. By
offering some land instead,

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it helped to tackle some of the
country\'s other big problems too.

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The state\'s national plan is to reclaim
about 150,000 acres of land each ear.

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It\'s something we have to do.

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We have no choice because of over population.
We also have to have a secure source of food

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and to secure food, you
have to secure jobs.

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So it\'s all linked.

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And so today, Hassan in his fields
is the product of a remarkable

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and largely unnoticed historic experiment.
A whole colony

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of graduates like him, nearly
40,000 over two decades

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have headed into the Egyptian desert.
Here they became farmers

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and put behind them the
notion of a government job.

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Four out of ten eventually failed.

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Hassan was among them. But he came back

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four years ago and joined the
others who were making it work.

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Badr has some training already behind him.
He\'s earned enough farming

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to build other businesses
like this iron works.

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A healthcare center and a
school have also opened.

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A school attended by Badr\'s son
Mohammed born in the desert

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without the help of doctors.

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Before the school was
built, it was just desert.

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There wasn\'t any life here. It was
an empty place. After the graduates

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came life losenned. Today the students
come to the school and make friendship.

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All the parents too know each other
and the village has become strong.

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But they didn\'t do it alone. There has
been help from outside like Ahmed.

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He\'s an agricultural technician
who has come to help Hassan

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with his irrigation problems. Many like Ahmed
realize what a hard time the graduates

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are having at first and the
potential they offered.

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One organization, the U.N.
international fund

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for agricultural development or IFAD has been
training farmers on how to grow crops for export

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and then they came into markets.

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We found graduates were
more receptive to new ideas

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and new agriculture technologies.

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The land was also close to
both Cairo and Alexandria.

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So you can see there was potential
to produce high quality crops

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which is (inaudible)

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we\'re exporting to the gulfs
and international markets.

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[sil.]

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But water as Hassan knows is
the first order of business.

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To get it from the Nile, the
country\'s only source of water

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to fields like his required
hundreds of kilometers of canals,

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pipes and pumps.

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Almost all crops are irrigated by the Nile. Some
critic say why waste these valuable resources

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in the desert. It\'s definitely
not a waste of water

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because the land is now arable. With some training,
we were able to introduce new varieties for export.

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There have also been
improvements to livestock.

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People now have milk for their children

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and they cancel the surplus. All of
these things generated economic growth

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in the desert communities. Hassan
had some financial success

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selling his apricots and mangos. Now
he wants to plant these grapevines.

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But the water pipes still
haven\'t been laid.

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He\'s waiting for a tractor to arrive
to dig trenches. In the mean time,

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the temperature is rising. The leaves
on some of the vines are drying out.

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The temperatures are much
more extreme than they were.

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I need to plant leaves as soon as possible.

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It\'s at moments like this that Hassan wonders if the
decision he and other less experienced graduates

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made to come to the desert
may have been a mistake.

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The mistake was that most of
us came without experience

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of farming knowledge. The government
wanted to solve the unemployment problem.

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They give us a solution. They
cannot do more than this,

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but it was our mistake to choose
something where we had no experience.

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Unlucky Hassan who\'s first
wife was right after all,

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just the sky connected to the desert,
our tour of the Egyptian desert

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suggests that\'s not quite
the end of the story.

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[sil.]

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Fayza isn\'t quite wearing
traditional rural garb.

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We came across her toiling away in the sun
several hours east of Hassan\'s village.

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She\'s another graduate farmer.

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Many of my friends have no job at all and no land
to grow food. If I hadn\'t received this land things

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would be very bad for my husband and me.
Because the cost of living

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is so high. We believe, we are very lucky.

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So lucky says Fayza that she now has
clean water at the turn of a tap.

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Egypt has invested millions of dollars

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in building water treatment plants
like this one near Fayza\'s village.

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It provides a steady supply of clean drinking
water to dozens of new graduate settlements.

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I see my future here.

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I would like to continue to reclaim land
from the desert and expand my farm.

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Around the corner from Fayza\'s

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two more graduates. Amal is a
developmental psychologist,

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Atah, a geochemist both have long
been tilling the desert soil.

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The situation has improved so
much since we received the land.

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Right now there is soft water.

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There are machines for reclaiming and
saving our land. Everything has improved.

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The salary, or the money,

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for our land is good.

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A good income, yes - a
seasonal income in fact.

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A seasonal income amounts to
more than they earn in the city.

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But the bigger pay off has
been the land itself.

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Making graduates like Atah pretty wealthy
should they ever decide to sell.

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Now it is at least around 400,000 pound.

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But previously it was a
maximum of 10,000 pound.

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Yes. No, we couldn\'t sell it.
This is a good thing

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that we have built in our life.
Accounts like this from Atah,

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Amal and other graduates suggested
a broader economic effect

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is also taking shape in upper Egypt.
Traditionally the poorest region in the country.

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You see a lot more economic vitality needs.

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There are many indicators to suggest
now life of people has improved.

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Despite these successes,

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the government has decided not to
renew its long sighted experiment

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on helping graduates back to the land.
That is unless

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they have agriculture degrees and are willing
to join forces with larger investors.

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So this fairly tale is over at
least for most new entrants.

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What we found was that out
of all those graduates,

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who are lucky enough to get the land,
those who had agriculture background

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
were more successful as
farmers than the others.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
What we plan in the future is
to make sure that all graduates

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
would take part have a
background in agriculture.

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
Some may say that\'s a pity.

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
At last Hassan is starting to
getting the hang of things

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
especially now the long promised
tractor has finally arrived.

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
In a village where 8 in 10 are
graduates, this social experiment

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
has amounted to a successful community.

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
Living in this village with
the graduates is special.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
We were almost all the same age
when we received the land.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
The graduates who stay faced the same
problems and when they had difficulties,

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
they supported each other. So now,
it is like a big family here.

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
And among them Hassan has become something

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
of a pillar of the community.

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
Hassan has become one of the most popular people
in the village. He\'s very helpful and takes part

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
in lots of activities. Their
collected efforts as farmers

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
have resulted in the reclamation of
a more than a million acres of land

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
and the emergence of a new desert economy.

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
Workers come from across
Egypt to work here.

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
So it has all been agreed many opportunities.
People who didn\'t have work found

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
a way to farm and now business is booming.

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
Just a few minutes where Hassan\'s village
a new city rises up in the desert.

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
The green fields and stories
of the graduates farmers

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
continue to attract other investments.

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
Today some of the women from Hassan\'s
village have come to this government

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
supported training center to
learn how to preserve food

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
in the hope of developing a cottage
industry. There is a Turkish uh…

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
professor who is interested
in sun drying tomatoes.

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
He\'s willing to buy whatever they
can make at their home right away.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
So there is a buyer for this.

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
Even back in Cairo, people are talking
about the graduates in the desert.

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
At a conference about how Egypt
will feed itself in the future,

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
agriculture experts and representatives from
big business recognize the graduate\'s success.

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:41.999
The new (inaudible)

00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:44.999
region where these new graduates

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
are working or living, we find
it\'s a very different mentality.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
They are a lot more receptive to what we\'re
doing, a lot more interested in learning

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
and a lot more interested in forward contracting
with the processes and making that link

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
with the processing industry and we think that,
that is very important. There has to be a link.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
One of the world\'s largest
processors is Heinz Foods.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
They now buy 6,000 tons of tomatoes
a year from the graduates.

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
We give them all our technology, all our
technology, all our recommendations.

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
So we make a contract
with them for the crops

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
and we deliver the crops to the factory

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
and that finish the contract
very smooth and very good.

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
All of these activity only makes
Hassan\'s decision to give up

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
a career in business and toil in the
desert sound that much smarter.

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
Even so Hassan still doesn\'t
call himself a farmer.

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
I cannot say I\'m a farmer. Farmers
have experience on the land.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
I don\'t have that. My experience
mainly comes from the training

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
I have had. So now, I can
have other people too.

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
Maybe the government never intended

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
it quite this way but it seems Hassans and
the graduates may have got lucky after all.

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
They\'ve made money on their
investment and helped others too.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
As for the millions

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
of other graduates who can\'t find
stable jobs in the global economy,

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:35.000
they may have to wait for
their own fairy tale.