Kherfi Freres

The water lies just twenty or thirty meters under the sand, electricity is inexpensive, and the land: there is plenty of it. In fact, as long as you work it, it is free. So it is that the Kherfi brothers started a farm in 1988 and imported Holstein cows from the Netherlands in 1993, establishing a dairy operation in the middle of the Sahara.

Cows

Algeria imports most of its milk as powder, so the market for fresh milk products is potentially huge, and the government is interested in developing the agricultural sector, so they invested 1.5 million euro in the operation.

Kherfi Freres

The surreal and truly jarring experience of traveling 140 kilometers across a hot and uniformly sand colored desert plateau to find a perfectly flat, lusciously moist, and strikingly green grass Field is impossible to communicate. If you narrowed your Field of vision as you drove up the dirt road from the highway to the farm you would think you were in Holland. There are four of these Fields, each a perfect circle defined by the length of the irrigation equipment which endlessly travels around at a speed slower than walking. These Fields feed the animals.

Kherfi Freres

Kherfi Freres have:
800 hectares
4 irrigated Fields
4000 chickens
600 sheep
70 cows
8 camels
12 dogs
15 employees
2 large tractors
2 small tractors

Kherfi Freres

They produce dates, cereal, vegetables, and milk. Next year they will begin producing fresh yoghurt and cheese. The milk I drank copious quantities of was unpasteurized, unhomogenized, staggeringly rich in cream, and absolutely delicious. I couldn’t get enough of it. The cows need a little bit of extra care in the summer, insuring that they stay in the shade for example, but otherwise they appear perfectly content.

Ibrahim Kherfi

Ibrahim is in his thirties and runs the dairy operation. He studied in Paris, married a girl he has known since they were kids, and lives in a large house in Guerrera with his parents and his brother’s family. He showed me a plot of land where he hopes to soon start building his own house, giving he and his wife just a little bit more breathing room. Living with your parents apparently presents its challenges.

Nasser

Nasser is 54 years old and runs the rest of the farm. He struck me as a supremely competent guy, with a quiet sense of humor and a bad back. I saw him do everything from make sahara bread to fixing a tractor, and the employees obviously respect him immensely. He has four kids and has been married twenty-four years.

Irrigation at Kherfi Freres

We cooked some meat on an open fire and ate salad and bread and oranges and dates, and I spent the night in a dormitory of sorts before leaving the next day for the open desert.

Guerara, Algeria