{"id":16581,"date":"2016-01-17T09:38:46","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T14:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16581"},"modified":"2016-01-17T09:38:46","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T14:38:46","slug":"saudi-arabia-is-buying-up-american-farmland-to-export-agricultural-products-back-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16581","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia is Buying Up American Farmland to Export Agricultural Products Back Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Saudi Arabia is Buying Up American Farmland to Export Agricultural Products Back Home<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Just what we need, cornfield crucifixions.<\/p>\n

Seriously though, this is very troubling. The Saudis are explicitly conserving their own resources at home, while exploiting land and water supplies\u00a0here in America.<\/p>\n

CNBC<\/em><\/a>\u00a0reports:<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u00a0and other Persian Gulf countries are scooping up farmland in drought-afflicted regions of the U.S. Southwest, and that has some people in California and Arizona seeing red.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia grows alfalfa hay in both states for shipment back to its domestic dairy herds.<\/strong>\u00a0In another real-life example of the world\u2019s interconnected economy, the Saudis increasingly look to produce animal feed overseas in order to save water in their own territory, most of which is desert.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Privately held Fondomonte California on Sunday announced that it bought 1,790 acres of farmland in Blythe,\u00a0California\u00a0\u2014 an agricultural town along the Colorado River \u2014 for nearly $32 million. Two years ago, Fondomont\u2019s parent company, Saudi food giant Almarai, purchased another 10,000 acres of farmland about 50 miles away in Vicksburg, Arizona, for around $48 million.<\/em><\/p>\n

But not everyone likes the trend. The alfalfa exports are tantamount to \u201cexporting water,\u201d because in Saudi Arabia, \u201cthey have decided that it\u2019s better to bring feed in rather than to empty their water reserves,\u201d<\/strong>said Keith Murfield, CEO of United Dairymen of Arizona, a Tempe-based dairy cooperative whose members also buy alfalfa. \u201cThis will continue unless there\u2019s regulations put on it.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recall, this is precisely the type of investment Michael Burry of \u201cBig Short\u201d fame\u00a0recently said<\/a>\u00a0he was involved in.<\/p>\n

In a statement announcing the California farmland purchase, the Saudi company said the deal \u201cforms part of Almarai\u2019s continuous efforts to improve and secure its supply of the highest quality alfalfa hay from outside the (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) to support its dairy business.\u00a0It is also in line with the Saudi government direction toward conserving local resources.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sure, conserve local, exploit American. Just brilliant.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Arabia is Buying Up American Farmland to Export Agricultural Products Back Home Just what we need, cornfield crucifixions. Seriously though, this is very troubling. The Saudis are explicitly conserving their own resources at home, while exploiting land and water supplies\u00a0here in America. CNBC\u00a0reports: Saudi Arabia\u00a0and other Persian Gulf countries are scooping up farmland in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[11770,6144,101,964,2241,319,4285,6174,701,827],"class_list":["post-16581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-geopolitics","tag-agricultural-land","tag-arizona","tag-california","tag-cnbc","tag-farmland","tag-food","tag-liberty-blitzkrieg","tag-michael-krieger","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16582,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16581\/revisions\/16582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}