Hezam Kittani rebuilt a USAID-funded strawberry system for a third of the irrigation cost

In a 2017 NPR report, Shaina Shealy describes how strawberries were barely grown in the West Bank before 2009; USAID grants of $705,358 funded elevated hanging planters with computerized drip irrigation, and the crop is now about 250 tons a year. Elevated plants stay warmer, giving a season from November to April, and berries hang down for easy picking. NPR reports hanging greenhouse plants yield three times the roughly 12 tons per acre of outdoor strawberries.

Hezam Kittani wanted farmers to succeed without handouts, so he set out to design a version they could replicate and pay for themselves. Working from YouTube videos and trial and error, he first copied the plastic boards used in the USAID system, which were hard to cut and stick together. A video suggested sewage pipes, but they cost more than the boards. He settled on wooden beams wrapped in white plastic sheets, the cheapest materials he found, filled with a mix of coconut shells, peat moss and foam balls learned from a University of Arizona video series.

The hard part was the irrigation computer. A teacher told him of a market selling irrigation timers for about $30 each; he taught himself to code and programmed a computer with nutrient and water measurements similar to the USAID system. The result was a $500 automated irrigation computer, about a third of the cost of the USAID model. USAID said it applauds innovation and wants the program to become self-sustaining.

Grant-funded systems stop spreading when the grant ends, so a version a farmer can pay for is the one that scales.

Testing three planter materials against price showed the plastic boards and pipes were not the cheapest route.

Off-the-shelf $30 timers plus self-taught code replaced the expensive part of the system.

He kept the part that mattered (elevated planting, measured watering) and cut the rest.

To make aid-funded tech spread, strip it to the cheapest version a farmer can afford alone and teach it, rather than distributing more grants.

This year was the first full harvest on Kittani's own backyard system. Five farmers came to him for advice; none had replicated it from scratch yet, but they were asking how to make their farms cheaper and more resource-efficient. He was working on plant tissue culture, a soil-connected smartphone app to track irrigation and pH, and solar power.