Farming in Sahara: The massive Sharq El Owainat cropland
Sharq El Owainat cropland in March 2026 true colour view. It’s big.
This post is part of the “Why here?” infrastructure series, where we explore why critical infrastructure sits where it does.
When we earlier passed over Sahara, the Waw an Namus volcano wasn’t the only thing that caught our eye.
A massive feature and I didn’t have to zoom in much to recognise it as crop circles, but I have never seen one so large. It is the Sharg El Owainat desert reclamation project spanning 100km. It’s big. How to farm in the desert at this scale?
Today, we explain why it’s there from a geographical constraints perspective with water access and suitable land surface telling the story, while steering clear of Egypt’s crop export-import dynamics.
1. What we see on the ground
Let’s first take a closer look.
Close up on the field. Photo via Google Earth.
Each of those circular fields has a diameter of 800 meters. I’m going to assume that’s an industry standard. It is a circle because there is an irrigation rig that spins around. We could calculate the total cultivation area from the images in Google Earth Engine but leave that for a later exercise and focus today on explaining the location.
The first time these circles appeared were in 1993, when 20 or so were there. Based on historical images, the rapid expansion started only around 2010 and has continued to this day. News articles tell me Egypt is going through an agricultural boom with a state-led strategic push.
Out of interest, SAR imagery below also reveals distinct crop and harvest areas and could be used to monitor crop yields
SAR view on March 2026. Bright orange areas are dense fields pre-harvest.
2. Where the water is coming from
The circular crops are not really a novelty, but why farm in the middle of a dry desert?
The nearest water from orbital perspective is the Toshka reservoir 160km away or the Nile river 260km away. The annual precipitation in the area is…well, whatever it is in Sahara. Close enough to zero that it will not explain water supply.
This leaves two options:
Pump water from the visible water sources
Pump water from underground aquifers
The first option would be expensive, and orbital imagery does not reveal the location of any overground piping leading to the area. Underground piping would be even more unlikely so we can safely assume water is not pumped from a distance. Furthermore, the areas around the Nile are not fully used in terms of land potential, but the water resource is.
That leaves the second option: The water comes from underwater aquifers. Is there a way we can see this from orbit? In short no, but there could be implicit indications.
When we zoom out and turn to orbital false-colour analysis, bright red shades bring out vegetation. Below we see a large swath of Sahara with various oases marked. They are naturally occurring and can only be explained by the presence of groundwater.
Water context in eastern Sahara seen with false colour imagery. Red indicates vegetation, revealing oases with water access.
While we cannot infer from the above image whether the oases are explained by separate groundwater pockets or a continuous groundwater area, luckily geologists have figured this one out. Below the desert in the image is one of the largest fossil water aquifers in the world: The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS).
Fossil denotation indicates ithe water is ancient, but also that it is not in practice regenerating. The nearest areas of precipitation are 400km south. There is an entire IAEA-led project seeking to understand the aquifer better and ensure the water resource is managed without sucking it dry and wrecking the entire ecosystem that depends on it.
In short, the Sharq El Owainat cropland relies on mined water.
3. Why is the water mined on that part of the aquifer
The underground aquifer opens a lot of suitable real estate with water access. As a result, one would think there is a lot of empty space around Sahara to park this operation, but viable locations seem rarer than I would have thought.
First, one must appreciate the footprint of roughly 100km x 100km. You want to park it out of the way from blocking existing urban growth, but also it just needs a lot of free real estate.
Second, while the aquifer may be vast, accessing it is not always straightforward. In practice, wells and oases tend to be on shallower parts of the crust where the water is closer to the surface. Below elevation profile is consistent with this hypothesis: The oases are shown to be on the darkest blue areas (lowest elevation) and the Sharq El Owainat also sits at the bottom of a shallow bowl, all suggestive of easier groundwater access.
Elevation profile of the region. Blue colour indicates lowest lying areas, typically co-inciding with oases or crop reclamation projects.
Third, cropland benefits not only from a flat ground, but ideally you also have a smooth (not rocky or hilly) surface for easier soil preparation. Radar satellite images can show us where smooth areas in Egypt are located. See below. Black generally indicates a smooth surface, if not necessarily flat nor cultivable, and white rougher areas.
SAR view of Egypt 2017. Black colour indicates smooth surface, white colour rougher or built-up areas. Light blue is water. Major roads are layered on top.
There are three locations marked that might at first glance fit the bill just as well but are easily eliminated:
A. This is the Qattara depression below sea level - a salt pan. This is thought to be ancient Mediterranean seabed, which would explain why the ground has very high salinity and is not good for cultivating crops. This area is also likely eliminated by lack of fresh groundwater
B. While smooth, this area is known as the Great Sand Sea with dunes. Think of Jabba and Sarlacc. In effect not flat nor an easy area to start cultivating crops
C. Farafra and Dakhla oases are around this spot, however, the black smooth area is both smaller than required and it is also a sand sea
The above leaves the current area as most suitable. See below how the area looked liked in SAR (VV decibel gamma) in 2017.
SAR view of the vicinity. Black colour indicates smooth surface, white colour rougher or built-up areas. Light blue is water and. Roads are layered on top.
In this area’s absence, the construction probably would have been done elsewhere but the layout may have been more distributed and network-like to work around the landscape, or then more preparatory land work would have been required.
Other drivers
The above explains the viability of location. For instance, road or infrastructure access does not. The road that needed to be built was 300 km long and a dedicated airport was built to bring in materials and export crops. You can build a factory near existing logistical flows, but natural resources sit where they are.
4. Why this matters
Sharq El Owainat is agriculture and at first feels out of place, but ultimately behaves like resource extraction. Crop circles expanding into empty desert creates the impression that land is abundant and placement is flexible. In reality, most of that land is not feasible.
When it comes to any infrastructure, large-scale systems like this only work where multiple constraints align at once. In this case groundwater, surface conditions, and climate. Orbital imagery does not show all of these directly, but it helps narrow down what is possible by eliminating alternatives.
Conclusion
This post started out from a simple “this location makes no sense to me” after first seeing the feature from orbit, but it didn’t take much time to think about what agriculture needs at the most basic geographical level and then put together an answer with orbital imagery - while intentionally steering clear from Egypt’s agricultural export-import dynamics.
Most importantly, this process and the small sense of discovery is one of the key reasons Orbital Vantage exists.
See you,
Orbital Vantage
