http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/03/1443993/-Saudi-Arabia-has-a-hay-farm-in-Arizona-because-Saudi-Arabia-is-out-of-water-to-grow-hay?detail=email
Arizona's water supply, like many states' water supplies, is predominantly used for farming. Arizona, as a state, has been pretty xenophobic over the years. Arizona isn't known for being the most partial to people of color. Like most of these states with Proud to Be an American tattooed across the lips of all their politicians, they are full of shit.
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.
That dairy company, named Almarai, bought the farm last year and has planted thousands of acres of groundwater-guzzling alfalfa to make that hay. Saudi Arabia can't grow its own hay anymore because those crops drained its own ancient aquifer.
The laws were put in place in the '70s, and kudos to Arizona — they were really one of the first states to put in groundwater laws. But the laws were really designed for local or domestic farming. The idea that another country would come and essentially export your water via crops just wasn't really around 30, 40 years ago. And so the laws that are in place are really inadequate for dealing with this new trend.
This is occurring in a part of Arizona that is unregulated for groundwater. So there are no limits on how much water they can pump.
Arizona is a pretty good place for farming hay. The high temperatures mean a much longer growing season for hay, and of course it also means they need a lot of water. The Saudis know exactly what will happen in Arizona—there's a book about what happened when they did the same thing in their own country.
Saudi Arabia’s mysteriously disappearing water came to light around the turn of the century. By 2002, the government had formed the Ministry of Water to search for answers. But the Sherlock Holmes of this story came from a surprising background.
A Saudi banker turned water detective put together the pieces in 2004 and published the now seminal report “Camels Don’t Fly, Deserts Don’t Bloom.” Elie Elhadj’s investigation revealed the culprit: Wealthy farmers had been allowed to drain the aquifers unchecked for three decades.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Saudi landowners were given free rein to pump the aquifers so that they could transform the desert into irrigated fields. Saudi Arabia soon became one of the world’s premier wheat exporters.
hmmmm Arizona republican led racial bed of discrimination they too rail against the Muslims but throw Hispanics out while appeasing Muslims.
The ruling House of Saud is a Sunni Muslim family, and Sunni Islam is the state religion of Islam. Sunnis comprise the vast majority of Muslims in Saudi Arabia, while Shiite Muslims make up a minority.
Bad news—republican leadership. Good news? The conservative citizens are just beginning to understand how contradictory their positions on things like this are.
No one we talked to has issue with these corporations coming in and wanting to make money. And the fact that it's going to Saudi Arabia or China, the locals simply didn't care. But what they did care about is that their water tables are falling. So their domestic wells that they use for their homes are increasingly dropping, and at some point, they're going to lose access to water.
Hopefully Arizonans can put 2 and 2 together and not come up with the answer "biscuit".
looks like they are selling their states precious water to Muslims the rail against as our number one danger. curious how that part of land is unregulated by design or just a stroke of luck for the Saudi's, how much are they receiving for the land and water and are Arizonians benefiting or more so did they know before now?????????????????????????????????????
