AQABA, Jordan (AP) — Water-poor Jordan on Thursday launched a project using seawater to produce crops with clean energy.

Jordan's King Abdullah II and Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, which contributed most of the $3.7 million cost, inaugurated the facility in the kingdom's Red Sea port city of Aqaba.

Haakon told reporters he was "impressed by the way innovative ideas have been translated into a plant the size of four football fields."

The facility, part of the Sahara Forest Project (SFP), produces "energy, freshwater and food and all this in an arid desert," he said.

The facility, surrounded by...