Saudi Arabia Is Buying Up American Farmland To Export Agricultural Products Back Home
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
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 here in America.
CNBC reports:
Saudi Arabia and 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.
Saudi Arabia grows alfalfa hay in both states for shipment back to its domestic dairy herds. In another real-life example of the world’s 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.
Privately held Fondomonte California on Sunday announced that it bought 1,790 acres of farmland in Blythe, California — an agricultural town along the Colorado River — for nearly $32 million. 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.
But not everyone likes the trend. The alfalfa exports are tantamount to “exporting water,” because in Saudi Arabia, “they have decided that it’s better to bring feed in rather than to empty their water reserves,” said Keith Murfield, CEO of United Dairymen of Arizona, a Tempe-based dairy cooperative whose members also buy alfalfa. “This will continue unless there’s regulations put on it.”
Recall, this is precisely the type of investment Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame recently said he was involved in.
In a statement announcing the California farmland purchase, the Saudi company said the deal “forms part of Almarai’s 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. It is also in line with the Saudi government direction toward conserving local resources.”
Crucially, the issue of land rights comes into play.
The area of the Arizona desert where the Saudis bought land is a region with little or no regulation on groundwater use. That's in contrast to most of the state, 85 percent of which has strict groundwater rules. 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.
Sure, conserve local, exploit American. Just brilliant.
"We're not getting oil for free, so why are we giving our water away for free?" asked La Paz County Board of Supervisors Chairman Holly Irwin.
...
Added Irwin, “We’re letting them come over here and use up our resources. It’s very frustrating for me, especially when I have residents telling me that their wells are going dry and they have to dig a lot deeper for water. It’s costly for them to drill new wells.”
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. State documents show there are at least 23 water wells on the lands controlled by Alamarai’s subsidiary, Fondomonte Arizona. Each of the wells is capable of pumping more than 100,000 gallons daily.
“You can use as much water as you’d like, as long as it’s put to a beneficial use, and you’re not required to report your water use,” said Michelle Moreno, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources, which has scheduled a public meeting for Jan. 30 in La Paz County to hear concerns from residents.
More competition for land and fodder is likely to make things more expensive for dairy farmers in California and elsewhere.
“It will ultimately drive the price up for the West Coast dairy operations,” said Robert Chesler, vice president of the dairy group at FCStone, a Chicago-based commodity-risk management company. “This is where they are buying that hay. This is where they are buying the farmland for dairy farms as well as and where they are buying the dairy goods, because we are obviously exporting more out of the West Coast.”
Just another example of the Saudis giving it good and hard to American public.
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It's good those old evil vampire fucks are still around to see their plans fall apart..
Bring dollars back into US economy instead exchanging for US gold was exactly Nixon/Kissinger goal.
As long as we don’t go Mobutu Sese Seko on them……….time will tell.
Kissinger's goal was for the vast majority - if not all, in his wild dreams - of petrodollar flows would be directed into financial assets (especially, U.S. Treasuries) and the suport of the U.S. arms industry.
Old news.
Since the U.S. government owns most everything west of the Mississippi, we can afford to sell some.Hell, sell them some of Utah. A-rabs gotta bunch of wives. Sons of Joseph Smith gotta bunch of wives. Like a match made in heaven err Hell.
I want names and addresses of all involved.
Carpetbagging foreigners must be run out of town on a rail or the REPUBLIC SHALL FALL.
"I'm outraged!"
~Soweto
22winmag...Tonight's Powerball Winner!
Edit: You may have to split it with nmewn. (see below)
It fell a long time ago ......
One guy, on a hill, with a .308 can fix it.
I mean..."our laws" don't mean anything anymore...right?
Not if Hillary is not indicted. You're right, sorta... the little people still get ramrodded by the " law".
ANYBODY else, other than Hillary, would be UNDER the jail, by now.
She must have something good on Petraus, for him to stay silent.
Petraus must have an addiction to breathing.
Hillary just said ; " no bank should be too big to fail, no individual too big to jail ".
Haha!
Mrs.N has actually gotten interested in all this crap lately...so I'm smoking ribs and I come in and she is watching it, I sit down...just in time to see them put up a...cartoon...on the screen...in the form of a question...about glowbull warming.
I look at her, she at me...she says..."Really? A cartoon? In whats supposed to be a serious presidential campaign debate?"
I say yeah, thats the level of intellect they think the people have who are watching this...as we both bust out laughing. In between guffaws and trying to catch our breath she's pointing at the screen...there's a guy in a canoe (rising sea levels dontcha know) paddling past a car, parked in a foot & a half of water and she says "Why doesn't he just walk, why does he need a canoe?"
I swear, wonderful entertainment...lol.
“We’re letting them come over here and use up our resources.
mmmkay, who's we?
someone shoot the sheriff?
Err, am I missing something here, or can a landowner NOT sell out to a foreign interest? Can neighbors pressure you to not sell to a foreign entity?
Or rather, does one of the 535 Club Members own the land which the Saudis are buying....??? Could be something only a U.S. politician could dream about.
Rope and lamp post please.
No, no limits there, at least of real meaning. How do you think CONagra, Cargill, and others stay in business. There are entire companies based upon leasing huge blocks of land from equity funds and farming them. Monsanto and the others mentioned prior could not run a business with only small family farms. They need to own the farms directly or indirectly through a patsy proxy.
I am okay with the use of glyphosate and GMO for those particular crops. That is all.
Just as long as they keep that crap at least 50 miles away from me and my plants, bees, etc. I'd say, just ship the old oil tankers back full of water and Monsanto GMO seed and let them have at it.
It would be smarter to just buy the beef.
The Saudi's are already doing it in your neck of the woods...
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/11/03/arizona-water
Seems to me that those Alfalfa fields need some crop dusting with the Right Stuff.
Those Saudi-American farms represent Mexican jobs American's do not want.
lmao!
Great catch
Saudi deserves nothing.
I'd say they deserve a grass-roots revolution.
Where's McMolotov? He might know how to beat this...
So, the USSA buying oil (foreign resources) with counterfeit money is okay. But, that same counterfeit being used to then buy land in the USSA is somehow wrong. I certainly don't like the mass murdering Saudi's. But the even more evil USSA empire has no just basis to complain about the ultimate completion of the transaction.
Saudi has very few resources.. Shipping farm goods half way around the world is no better then
towing icebergs to Saudi Arabia.
Until you are very thirsty, then it starts to make sense
Remember the UN oil for food deal?
J P Morgan led the banks on that one
http://zota.org/2004/12/12/oil-for-food-notes/
I'll call South Hell and get J P Morgan's opinion on this.
Nothing wrong with this. All we need is some regulation on groundwater usage. Libertards are supposed to support that since property-rights recognition is about the only legitimate function of government, amirite?
Sonny said in the the Gdfather.You fight for your family,not your country.
Best play on the greatest resource water. To expensive to transport except as a agri biz product
America would sell its own mother for $1
Yellen for $1?
Who runs an un american corporation bent on its destruction?
Ding, that is correct
Ding Wu?
Those Chinese are in a fight with the Sodomites to run down their Treasury Holdings.
If Americans are wise, they should gift her to Israel along with the Fed and all it's members and owners.
You nailed it. Dumb, selfish, no tribal loyalty.
A Jew might also "sell his mother". For $1,000,000. And then force the buyer into bankruptcy, and buy her back for $1.
Cause they're not stupid enough to "Turn the other cheek, to bless those who curse them, nor forgive those who persecute them". They got guts, brains, long memories, and unity that Christians do not.
It funny...we beg them to buy treasuries...then when they want to spend them we bitch.
We are now getting the bill for 45 years of livin' high. We borrowed, we spent. Now the Chinese and Saudis, like the Japanese before them want to spend some of the money and they become 'evil foreigners' when before they were our 'trading partners'. This has been seen time and again through out history. No one likes it when the bill comes due.
Individuals do it too. We beg bankers for a loan and when they ask for their money back they become the 'evil banksters'. Humans are like that.
Knock it off with the "we" thing.
You sound downright foolish.
I didn't beg anyone to buy anything.
I didn't beg a bankster for a loan. If I can't afford it, I do without.
Does this mean I'm not human?
You are a Good Human
The others( you referred above) are Just Bad Humans
That's the difference
Its called recycling US dollars back to the US in order to get as much value for the currency while they can...When the US defaults after the petrodollar demise the currency will dramatically decline in value while the ownership and production will be shipped to S Arabia, China etc...so that their economies can survive...for the US shortages and hyperinflation....world is simply doing what the US has been doing for a very long time raping scarse resouces...welcome to your new masters America...your leaders sold you out!
Let's see them hold it
Bingo, Fred.
If Steve Liesman gets a Proctological exam with no anesthesia Live from Central Park tomorrow I promise I'll watch CNBS
Anyone have any toxic waste they want to get rid of? "Oh, that, the powder on the wheat and corn, that's just flavoring. Of course it's not radioactive. Well, maybe just a touch..."