saudi alfalfa farms in arizonasaudi alfalfa farms in arizona

The mayor, who also grows alfalfa, said he isn't concerned about the Saudis buying up land in his community. of global calories and 37 percent of the worlds protein, for example, it would Camels also figured prominently in biblical stories and the imagination of the desert as biblical. And the first directors thought along the lines of the camel promoters, looking to the Middle East: How do we colonize this desert we dont know anything about? That farm which does not pay for the water according to the Associated Press uses the water to grow its alfalfa plants. How did a Saudi-owned farm end up in Arizona? TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) Arizona has revoked two drilling permits for two water wells for a Saudi Arabia-owned alfalfa farm. Fondomonte did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the AP. Prescott honored 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots, firefighters who lost their lives 10 years ago in the Yarnell Hill fire tragedy, on Friday. Our View: It's not the Saudis, it's the alfalfa - azcentral.com See ourletters to the editor policy. The United Arab Emirates-owned Al Dahra ACX Global Inc. grows forage crops in Arizona and California, and is a major North American exporter of hay. "This will continue unless there's regulations put on it. It then exports the plants to Saudi Arabia to feed dairy cattle. Texas GOP Offers Workers the Freedom to Boil Alive, The Right-Wing Groups Behind the War on ESG, Ohioans Keep Paying for Republicans Dirty Energy Scandal. PHOENIX (AP) - The state of Arizona has rescinded drilling permits for two water wells for a Saudi Arabia-owned alfalfa farm in the western portion of the state after authorities said they discovered inconsistencies in the company's well applications. It's costly for them to drill new wells.". In Arizona, fresh scrutiny of Saudi-owned farm's water use Its owned by a subsidiary of Saudi Arabiaheadquartered Water Permits for Saudi Arabia-Owned Farm in Arizona Revoked It is about making sure Arizona is considers the impact of everybodys straw. Perhaps understandably, Egyptians ship scarce Nor is an area around Willcox, where homeowners, farmers, ranchers and grape growers became concerned about groundwater depletion. "We do live in a globalized marketplace, and the fact that we ship food to China and Japan and ship automobiles back to the United States is part of the globalization of our marketplace," said Daniel Putnam, an alfalfa and forage specialist with the University of California-Davis. Fondomonte Arizona, a subsidiary of Almarai Co., is under fresh scrutiny for growing alfalfa, which is bound for the Gulf kingdom, as Arizonas drought worsens. The answer may be yes. In August, an Arizona attorney general candidate called for an investigation into a 2015 sweetheart deal between the Saudi agribusiness company Fondomonte and the Arizona State Land Department, which had allowed Fondomonte to lease desert farmland west of Phoenix at one-sixth its market value and pump groundwater from Phoenixs water reserves. June 25, 2023 - 171 likes, 7 comments - Jessie Dickson (@sacramentofoodforest) on Instagram: "As the American west and southwest deal with a decades long mega drought . The remarkable thing about Saudi Arabia's story is that it'd done something similar in the desert until the water ran out. Follow her onTwitter@sbarchenger. The temperatures are so high that it takes a lot more water to keep that barren soil moist for the alfalfa to grow. (These have been edited for clarity and brevity.). public land from Arizona and taking advantage of the states lax groundwater The state of Arizona has rescinded drilling permits for two water wells for a Saudi Arabia-owned alfalfa farm in the western portion of the state after authorities said they discovered inconsistencies in the company's well applications. He graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the Arizona State University in May of 2022. Hobbs spent $1.5 million to help northern Arizona police protect their cities. sense to grow alfalfa in parched Saudi Arabia, which is why the kingdom banned We had found them in this cactus-filled valley in the very remote part of Arizona, and as we're driving down the road, all of a sudden we see a sign for a company from United Arab Emirates, Al Dahra, and we realize that another company has come out here and essentially replicated the exact same thing. Katie Hobbs earlier this year, who said Mayes did not have the sole authority to take action, but who has criticized the deals, too. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. But to me, the double-exposure image was something that helped to see the past and the present together. Saudi Arabia is buying up farmland in US Southwest - Yahoo But not . secure supplies of freshwater and is actually a net Attorney General Mayes said it's long-past time for Arizona to wake up and address the growing water crisis 'head on' before it's too late. It is also in line with the Saudi government direction toward conserving local resources.". Legal Statement. The. There's abundant supplies of water in Blythe for farmers from the Colorado River," he said. ignore the waste in certain trade-offs. Virtual water flows save Si vous ne souhaitez pas que nos partenaires et nousmmes utilisions des cookies et vos donnes personnelles pour ces motifs supplmentaires, cliquez sur Refuser tout. globalization are bringing it home to everyoneand making it much harder to It makes logical sense for them to do that because they're not going to be able to grow it in Saudi Arabia, especially for milk production.". emissions are driving climate change, which is exacerbating County leaders have voiced concerns over the future water supply. This week, Attorney General Kris Mayes said her office uncovered the inconsistencies in applications for new wells for the company Fondomonte Arizona LLC, which uses sprinklers to grow alfalfa in La Paz County and exports it to feed dairy cattle in Saudi Arabia. And that eventually led to this big investment in agriculture that continues to this day at the University of Arizona. Saudi Arabia, struggling with its own water shortages in the past decade, restricted the growth of some forage crops in the country. new housing construction because of the water shortage. Conservatives arent so keen on conservation. Its lawyers have said previously that the company legally leased and purchased land in the U.S. and spent millions on infrastructure improvements. But in the Northwest, spring never showed, Supreme Court keeps the Navajo Nation waiting for water, The miller moth is hard to love, but it deserves our respect, The long road to access at Willamette Falls, James Watt, Ted Kaczynski and power over lands. At Lake Mead, America's most voluminous water impoundment when it was full and a lifeline to everyone from Phoenix to San Diego, a crisis has arrived. nexus and have to forgo The permits were two two water wells for a Saudi Arabia-owned alfalfa farm in western Arizona. and food, consider the many possible careers for a single water droplet. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Saudi Hay Farm In Arizona Tests State's Supply Of Groundwater Almarai is headquartered in the very center of Saudi Arabia, just outside of Riyadh. Those operations have attracted less scrutiny. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Kingman is another area in the state where out-of-state farmers are setting up large operations using groundwater. If choices have to be made in the era of climate change, there Alfalfa is one of the world's most water-intensive crops, and thousands of acres of land in drought-parched western Arizona are dedicated to growing it. We had gone out to the desert to look at Almarai. Ancient springs that were mentioned in the Bible began drying up, and the Saudi Arabian government told its dairy companies to start importing their hay and their wheat from other parts of the world. This Week in Agriculture. They have said the companies are exploiting Arizonas groundwater law that allows farms to pump as much water as they want in a time of drought. AZFamily reports in just three minutes, both wells would pump the amount of water an average family of four uses in a month. Halverson's sources told him that the farm is now consuming significantly more water, since alfalfa is a particularly thirsty crop. industry that needs reexamining. The second largest falls in the U.S. have been inaccessible since industrialists dammed them and lined the river with paper mills 150 years ago. Reporter Nathan Halverson tells NPR's Renee Montagne that Almarai bought about 15 square miles in the Arizona desert. Geographer Natalie Koch, a professor at Syracuse University who grew up in Arizona and studies the Arabian Peninsula, began researching the deal in 2018. Arizona AG takes aim at foreign-owned farms that pump groundwater - CNN California, Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. If humans didnt devote over This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. In recent years, public attention and anger has grown over the way water in inefficient transformation of water into human food increasingly intolerable. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Hobbs grants $1.5 million to police departments in Northern Arizona, Prescott remembrance event commemorates 10th anniversary of Yarnell Hill Fire tragedy, Police arrest five people after State Farm Stadium brawl on Thursday, Number of East Phoenix residents with no power drops from around 1,000 to 300, Thank you to Al McCoy for 51 years as voice of the Phoenix Suns, How to identify the symptoms of 3 common anxiety disorders, Valley Boys & Girls Club uses esports to help kids make healthy choices. Back in Blythe, the purchase of farmland comes as urban residents of California face state-mandated water cutbacks due to a fourth year of severe drought. State 48's climate means that they can produce eight to 10 cuttings per year, but while the state has plenty of sunshine days (generally around 300), water is a precious commodity there. Almarais holdings in the Southwest are just one example of the farmland the company and its subsidiaries operate outside Saudi Arabia. 0:04. The U.S. government sponsored a team of Arizona farmers to go over in 1942 to share their experience of growing alfalfa and all the water-extraction techniques they had mastered in Arizona. in the Western United States, the growing water crisis involving 1.8 Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said Friday that the drilling permits for Saudi Arabian-owned company Fondomonte were revoked, claiming credit after she raised objections in early April to state agencies about discrepancies in application paperwork. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. conversely, with emissions from food food. scarcity around the Colorado Riverand its not the lawns Besides the Gulf countries, China, South Korea and Japan are big buyers of American hay. Arizona also has a deeper historical role. The first one came from Oman. In rural Arizona's La Paz County, on the state's rugged border with California, the decision by a Saudi-owned dairy company to grow alfalfa in the American Southwest for livestock in the Gulf . commercial and industrial use account for another 5 percent. Arizona has done a far better job than other states in managing its water. or redistributed. So the camel promoters and the first directors of the experiment station were thinking on the same terms: How do we promote this desert that we dont know anything about? The latest Arizona headlines, national news events of the day + weather updates. Then, the regents realized that there was new federal funding that was being given out through the (1887) Hatch Act, an add-on to the Morrill Act, (which created the land-grant universities), to establish university agriculture experiment stations. Well, not exactly. Fondomonte applied for two 1,200-foot, 3,000-gallons-per-minute wells on Aug. 23. crops for ethanol,American homes instead of Saudi milk. But the question is much bigger than one foreign-owned farm. water used to grow crops that humans dont even eat directly, such as alfalfa, turned into biofuelsthats more land than all the other types of energy production In Arizona, Fresh Scrutiny of Saudi-Owned Farm's Water Use Copyright 2023 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. "It's outrageous and frankly unacceptable that the state would even consider granting new wells to allow the Saudis to pump millions of gallons of water to grow more alfalfa for their cows," Mayes said, noting the vast amount of water that could come from those new wells. So they got experimental date palms sent to Arizona. We know that land is subsiding. This Saudi company draws unlimited Arizona ground water to grow alfalfa amid But not everyone likes the trend. News that Saudi Arabia's largest dairy is growing alfalfa in Arizona for hungry cows back home was greeting with predictable howls of "Aint it awful.". Humans Katie Hobbs, also a Democrat, saying in her January state of the state address that she, too, would look into the practice. One way the crisis is exposing these trade-offs is dairy cows. Or we could take the water from a reservoir or underground Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia. Anna V. Smith, Mark Olalde and Umar Farooq. The land is being leased at such a suspiciously Saudi company draws unlimited Arizona ground water to grow alfalfa amid drought By Ben Tracy April 20, 2023 / 10:39 AM / CBS News Farms in western Arizona are growing alfalfa - one of. A Saudi Arabian company is at the center of a water controversy in Arizona that bubbled to the surface during the 2022 election cycle. countries like Egypt, which grows the thirsty cotton that might end up in American shortage, Egypt is planning to build new desalination Egypts virtual water exports. "They got about 15 water wells when they purchased the property. Two years ago, Fondomont's parent company, Saudi food giant Almarai, purchased another 10,000 acres of farmland about 50 miles away in Vicksburg, Arizona, for around $48 million. increases its imports of fresh surface water and groundwaterembedded in other It turns out that hay yields in the desert are the best in the United States. You can literally get three or four times as much hay growing in the desert because you have a very long growing season: It's hot, so the hay dries really quickly once you cut it. Note: This story has been updated to correct that Arizonas attorney general called for an investigation into a deal between Fondomonte and the Arizona State Land Department. A private company that farms alfalfa in Arizona's Butler Valley cannot drill two additional wells on state-owned land there, potentially curtailing the use of some groundwater in an . We can see that with our eyes," Mayes said. After draining their own glass, the Saudis stick a straw in our groundwater and start slurping. Legal Statement. Got a confidential news tip? Saudi farmers from doing so in 2018 and started relying more on land in Arizona, Have a story idea or tip? The Saudi farm near Parker is not within one of the areas. Saudi farm brings Arizona water controversy to boiling point - MSN The storehouses belong to Fondomonte Farms, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based company Almarai - one of the largest food. So the idea was to import a bunch of camels that would carry the huge heavy loads that they needed to establish the military outposts in the Southwest. The two wells. That was two months after The Arizona Republic revealed sweetheart land leases to Fondomonte, and other companies, that allowed it to use groundwater without oversight. Even more concerning to some are the farms . This alfalfa is being grown by a Saudi Arabia dairy giant for . State documents show there are at least 23 water wells on the lands controlled by Alamarai's subsidiary, Fondomonte Arizona. Of course, this one farm and the Saudi cows it feeds are HALF OF CA NO LONGER IN DROUGHT AFTER TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF RAIN, SNOW HIT THE STATE LAST YEAR. "In one day the amount of water pumping out of just one of those wells could serve roughly 30,000 Arizona residents, which is pretty astonishing given that the entire population of La Paz County has just over 16,000 people," she said. The water in the area is designated as a future supply for Phoenix and other urban areas. Phoenix, Tucson and other Arizona cities have restrictions on how much groundwater they can pump under a 1980 state law aimed at protecting the states aquifers. Saudi alfalfa sparks tension in Arizona's Sonoran Desert The states groundwater, Hobbs said, "should be used to support Arizonans, not foreign business interests.". Almarai has a number of international landholdings to source their grain for the massive dairy herds they have in Saudi Arabia; theyre now sourcing most of their grain from other parts of the world. Outside of Phoenix, in the scorching Arizona desert, sits a farm that Saudi Arabia's largest dairy uses to make hay for cows back home. "It is unconscionable that as recently as eight months ago, the state of Arizona was approving new deep-water wells designed to pump thousands of gallons of water per-minute out from under La Paz County," said Attorney General Mayes in a statement. Well, with new state leadership and the ever-increasing urgency of the issue, now is the time for the state government to get serious about regulating groundwater across Arizona.. When Mayes brought the inconsistencies in the applications to the attention of state officials, they agreed to rescind the permits, which were approved in August. is used in peoples homes according to a recent study in Nature; Why are Saudi farmers pumping Arizona groundwater? - High Country News Locals are rightly concerned about the impact on their groundwater. But there are existential threats from drought and groundwater depletion that demand constant attention. About a week prior to Mayes' announcement, the Arizona Department of Water Resources notified Fondomonte the permits were revoked at the request of the Arizona State Land Department, which allowed a permit for land improvements to expire and prevented Fondomonte from drilling the wells. But the rub here is that you need lots of water. This is occurring in a part of Arizona that is unregulated for groundwater. In an arid pocket of Arizona's rural southwest, thirsty tufts of alfalfa are guzzling unlimited amounts of groundwater only to become fodder for dairy cows some 8,000 miles . On regulating the practice of exporting water in the form of alfalfa hay. The farm thats drawing the ire of Arizonans sits in La Paz According to Elie Elhadj of the Water Research Group, Saudi Arabia's s 1970s policy of limitless water-pumping (a rate that averaged around 5 trillion gallons per year by the 90s) resulted in a total inability to farm wheat due to the Kingdom's non-existent aquifers. Local development and groundwater pumping have contributed to the groundwater table falling since 2010 by more than 50 feet in parts of La Paz County, 130 miles west of Phoenix. How the so-called virtual water trade affects the Colorado River. A Silver Alert was issued on Friday night for a 69-year-old man who was last seen driving in the area of 40th Street and Thunderbird Road. Fondomonte has several other wells on the property in western Arizona, near Bouse. HCN spoke with Koch about her book Arid Empire, out this January from Verso Books, which delves into the conjoined history of the two desert landscapes. "This is water that belongs to the people of Arizona and needs to stay in the ground in La Paz County.". The land in question had previously been under cultivation for corn, cotton and other crops, including smaller amounts of alfalfa for hay, he tells The Salt. This desert valley is being farmed for hay and alfalfa using groundwater pulled from the Colorado River, with much of the hay exported to feed animals in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Thieves are ravaging California's nut farms, El Nino's likely effects on the weather, US economy this year, California's El Nino floods keep roofers, insurers busy. Each of the wells is capable of pumping more than 100,000 gallons daily. academics. by introducing people to the concept of the virtual water trade.. Amid a broader investigation by the state attorney general, Arizona last week rescinded a pair of permits that would have allowed Fondomonte Arizona, a subsidiary of Almarai Co., to drill more than 1,000 feet into the water table to pump up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute to irrigate its forage crops.