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January 2008
1/22/08
From Dust to Dust; or, Greening the Saudi Desert
1/3/08
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
4:14:00 AM EST
Feeling Quiet
Over the millennia, arid conditions prevented the development of settled agricultural communities of any size in the Arabian Desert. Since the early 1980s, however, Saudi Arabia spent enormous amounts of money and exhausted massive volumes of water from mainly nonrenewable aquifers ostensibly on achieving food self-sufficiency. On January 8, 2008, the Saudi government abandoned its food independence strategy and decided instead to import the country’s entire wheat needs by 2016. This article examines the events that led to the old and the new strategies and the lessons that may be drawn from a politically determined economic and ecological policy with negative tendencies of a poorly informed elite enjoying rentier economic circumstances.
A roller coaster performance
Farming is alien to the desert habitat and the culture of its peoples. Scant rainfall of 70-100 mm per annum constrained Saudi food production and population growth. Until recent decades, little or no groundwater was extracted because pumping technology was not available.
Having almost no expertise in settled farming, Saudi investors were induced by huge government subsidies to import the technology and the farm workers. Wheat growing was emphasized. Between 1980 and 1992, wheat production grew by 29 folds; from 142,000 tons to 4.1 million tons; making the Saudi desert the world’s sixth-largest wheat exporting country. Such quantity was greater than the self-sufficiency requirement of a country of 17 millions in population; or, its storage capacity of 2.38 million tons.
To achieve this big growth, the wheat-producing areas were increased by 857,000 hectares; or by 14 folds, from 67,000 hectares in 1980 to 924,000 hectares in 1992.
Starting in 1993, however, under pressures from low oil prices since the second half of the 1980s, from heavy spending on defense and security, from the cost of the Iran/Iraq War (1980-1988), from the cost of the 1991 Gulf War, and from the cost of maintaining the expensive lifestyle of some 4,000 immediate members of the Al-Saud ruling family the government had to scale down its wheat-growing subsidy program. On defense and security between 1981-1993, Saudi Arabia spent a total of US$225 billions out of US$420 billions in total oil revenues. On the 1991 Gulf war, it spent US$80 billions, and on the Iran/Iraq War, it spent US$25.7 billions. The ruling family is estimated to have cost US$4 billions per annum during the 1980. All this spending happened while Saudi budget deficits were at their height, adding up to US$130 billion between 1984 and 1992.
By the end of 1996, 76% of the new wheat growing surface added between 1980 and 1992 were abandoned, 650,000 hectares out of the 857,000 hectares. Wheat production dropped during the same period by 70%, from 4.1 million tons to 1.2 million tons. By 2005, however, wheat production increased to 2.65 million tons. On January 8, 2008, Reuters and other news agencies reported that starting this year purchases of wheat from local farmers would be reduced by 12.5%, with the aim of relying entirely on imports by 2016.
This dramatic rise and the equally dramatic fall of Saudi Arabia’s cereal production, reflect haphazard planning. The experience proved merely that throwing money to import the expertise and the machinery to extract mammoth volumes of water could make even a desert bloom, until either the money or the water runs out. No accounting, however, has ever detailed the full cost of this adventure in terms of money or water.
The financial cost
For the sixteen years between 1984 and 2000, it may be estimated that the assessable cost of Saudi agricultural development may be put at about US$85 billions, representing 18% of the country’s US$485 billions in revenues from oil exports during the period. This huge investment produced wheat at an average cost of more than US$500 per ton. During the same period, the international market price for wheat averaged about US$120 per ton. When the waste resulting from abandoning the newly reclaimed and irrigated lands plus four un-quantified government subsidies are added the cost might more than double. The first un-quantified subsidy is government’s price support to electricity and fuel, from which the farmers benefited. The second is the value of the concessionary borrowing terms on a total of US$9 billions granted to 394,000 loans by Saudi Agricultural Bank by 2000. The third is the value of 1.67 million hectares of government land given away between 1980 and 1992 under the 1968 Regulation for Fallow Land distribution, and which was used in farming. The fourth is the cost of the bureaucracy that the Saudi government had to employ in order to administer the new agricultural schemes.
The water cost
If money has become of late of no concern in Saudi Arabia, water ought to have been. In the searing desert sun, the water needed to irrigate a hectare of land is twice to three times the volume needed to grow the same produce under temperate conditions. Between 1980 and 1999, a gargantuan volume of water—300 billion cubic meters (m3), the equivalent to six years flow of the Nile River into Egypt—was used in Saudi Arabia’s agricultural adventure. Two-thirds of the water thus used is regarded as nonrenewable, according to estimates by the Ministry of Agriculture and Water (MAW). At this rate, it does not take a genius to predict that regardless of how vast Saudi nonrenewable water reserves might have been they will sooner or later be depleted if the extraction does not stop.
That the 1993 scaling down in subsidies was designed to conserve water cannot be supported by the facts. Despite the dramatic drop in cereal production, agricultural water use remained strong. Between 1994 and 2005, while the overall irrigated surface declined by 31%, from 1.596 million hectares to 1.107 million hectares water used in irrigation was reduced by 13% only, from 20 billion m3 to 17 billion m3. Furthermore, between 1990 and 1994, average agricultural water use was 12,225 m3 per hectare. Over the next five years, agricultural water use increased to an average of 15,230 m3 per hectare. In 2005, the average climbed to 15,760 m3 per hectare.
The rather marginal decline in agricultural water use between 1994 and 2005 and the persistent rise in the per hectare use of water was due to the fact that most of the water saved from growing less cereals was used to increase the growing of produce that requires greater volumes of water to grow than cereals; such as, animals, animal products, fruits, and alfalfa. Generally, one thousand tons of water (1,000 m3) is needed to produce a ton of wheat and 16,000 m3 of water is needed to produce a ton of red meat. Alfalfa requires six times as much water to grow as wheat. 5,000 tons of water is needed to produce a ton of chicken.
Saudi exports of virtual water
Saudi Arabia not only increased the production of high water using foodstuffs for domestic consumption, but it also has been exporting to neighboring city-states animals, animal products, vegetables, animal and vegetable fats and oils, beverages, and other high water using agro-commodities, though the export of alfalfa was stopped in 2000.
Foodstuffs are an encapsulation of water. Food is virtual water. Saudi food exports are synonymous with shipping away the country’s finite water resources. For the five years between 1997 and 2001, the volume of Saudi water used to produce the exported foodstuffs averaged 2.5 billion m3 annually. For the five years between 2002 and 2006, the value of Saudi foodstuff exports doubled in comparison with the value of foodstuffs exports during the previous five years. If the composition of the exported produce did not change, it would be safe to estimate that Saudi water exports in the form of foodstuffs between 2002 and 2006 averaged 5 billion m3 per annum.
To put 5 billion m3 of water in perspective, Saudi Arabia, which ranked third in the world in the use of household water (286 liters per day), needed 2.2 billion m3 for drinking and household purposes in 2006.
Generally, the volume of drinking and household water a country needs represents a fraction of its agricultural water needs. Of Saudi Arabia’s 19.8 billion m3 of water used in 2006, householders used 2.2 billion m3 (11%), agriculture used 17 billion m3 (86%), and industry used 0.6 billion m3 (3%). Such ratios are more or less typical.
That during the ten-year period between 1997 and 2006, an arid Saudi Arabia exported around 37.5 billion m3 of its finite water endowment, most of which was nonrenewable, is breathtaking. That the export of virtual water continues today unabated is incredible.
A guesstimate of water availability
Estimates of the day when Saudi nonrenewable aquifers would become depleted vary. One estimate using the M. king Hubbert technique might possibly be a helpful guide.
Hubbert’s theory, developed in 1956 for the oil industry, observed that in any large region, unrestrained extraction of a finite resource rises along a bell-shaped curve that peaks when about half the resource is gone. Hubbert found that a growth curve of the utilization of other finite natural resources should rise in a manner similar to those of the fossil fuels.
Water extraction from Saudi Arabia’s finite nonrenewable reserves has been unrestrained since the start of the country’s foray into agricultural production in the early 1980s. The volume of water extraction from nonrenewable aquifers reached a peak of slightly more than 14 billion m3 in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, the extraction volume dropped to 12.5 billion m3 and in 1996, it dropped further to 12 billion m3. In 2006, the extraction was estimated to be some 11.3 billion m3.
Using Hubbert’s theory, the period starting 1993/1994 might signify the midpoint in the volume of Saudi nonrenewable water reserves. Since 1980 was the year when water extraction from nonrenewable sources started in earnest, it might be considered as the starting date of the aquifers’ expected useful life. Prior to 1980, nonrenewable water extraction was insignificant.
According to Saudi Ministry of Agriculture and Water, the aggregate water extracted from the nonrenewable aquifers between 1980 and 1994 was 140 billion m3. Hubbert’s theory suggests that the volume of Saudi nonrenewable water before the heavy extraction had started was likely to be around 280 billion m3 and that the remaining volume of water around 1994 was 140 billion m3. On this basis, such a volume would last for 10 years, if the average extraction would be 14 billion m3 per annum. If, on the other hand, the average extraction would be 10 billion m3 per annum, then the volume would last 14 years.
Already, there is evidence of water quality degradation along with dwindling volumes of previously abundant aquifers. Natural springs which discharge many aquifers have dried up in most parts of the Western, Central, and Eastern regions along with seawater intrusion in areas of the East Coast. Also, due to poor quality sanitary and drainage systems, and the unmonitored use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides the water quality in most aquifers has become brackish.
The Saudi government’s embarrassing abandonment of a strategy propagated for thirty years as its pride achievement could be an indication of serious trouble with the country’s nonrenewable groundwater sources. Such an announcement could not have been possible unless the condition of the nonrenewable aquifers has reached perilous levels in terms of quality and quantity. The Saudi action lends credibility to Hubbert’s guesstimate that the day of reckoning is near.
The impossibility of Saudi self-sufficiency in foodstuffs
Saudi food independence is impossible to sustain. Saudi renewable water resources are insufficient and the country’s population growth is among the highest in the world. Between 1975 and 2004, the Saudi population grew by an average annual rate of 4.1%; compared with Arab countries, 2.6%; developing countries, 1.9%; OECD countries, 0.8%.
The Saudi population is forecast to increase from its size in 2006 of 24 millions to reach 40 millions in 2025. Given such a high rate of growth and, regardless of how large Saudi water reserves might be, Saudi food independence is impossible to sustain in the long run. It is only a matter of time before irrigation exhausts the recoverable contents of the aquifers.
An individual needs about 1,000 cubic meters of water each year to raise the food requirement of that individual. The composition of diet determines the volume of water embedded in food. The more meat, especially red meat, a diet contains, the more water embedded in food is consumed.
Saudi Arabia’s 24-million population in 2006 would need an estimated 24 billion m3 of water for self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. Despite using mammoth volumes of water over the past three decades and spending huge amounts of money, Saudi full self-sufficiency in foodstuffs remains as elusive as ever. In 2006, Saudi agriculture used 17 Billion m3 of water from all sources, leaving a gap of 7 billion m3; or 30%, to be imported. Between 2002 and 2006, Saudi foodstuffs imports added up to US$35 billions; an average of US$7 billions for each of the five years involved. During the previous five years (1997-2001) Saudi food imports added up to US$24 billions; an annual average of almost US$5 billions. As Saudi Arabia’s population grows, the water sufficiency ratio will correspondingly decline and food imports will increase.
As the Saudi population reaches 40 millions around 2025, Saudi water consumption embedded in foodstuffs would reach 40 billion m3. Even if, and this is a very big if, the volume of irrigation water remains unchanged from the 17 billion m3 in 2006, the proportion of food produced domestically to total Saudi food requirements would be 43%. Under the more likely scenario, however, as Saudi nonrenewable aquifers get depletedand Saudi agriculture becomes reliant on renewable water sources only, the ratio of Saudi food self-sufficiency in 2025 would be 12.5%, given MAW’s estimate of the country’s renewable water sources of about 5 billion m3 per annum.
Possible reasons for greening the desert
Why did Saudi Arabia pursue expensive agricultural development in the desert despite persistent and large budget deficits during the early 1980s and 1990s? Was it to achieve food independence, settlement of the Bedouins, or enrich the ruling elite? The answer is probably a combination of all these factors, but with a special emphasis on the enrichment of the ruling elites.
Food independence
Desert agriculture is not an intuitive choice for an economist. However, food independence in Saudi Arabia has a nationalistic appeal. It conveys a message of control over the country’s own political and economic destiny.
The misguided belief that home production was a means of securing the Saudi economy was successfully constructed by those making Saudi rural policy and water policy. Propagated in the national discourse as a well-planned strategy to insulate the country from the risk of a possible wheat boycott by oil-consuming, food-producing countries, desert irrigation was turned into a sacrosanct belief. The strategy might have been prompted by threats in the US media to withhold food supplies as leverage against unacceptable oil export and pricing policies, following the 1973 oil boycott and quadrupling of oil prices.
While independence in foodstuffs is a politically attractive slogan, it is a flawed policy. Wheat—indeed all foodstuffs—is not critical for national security. The inability to import, for example, desalination equipment, spare parts, and engineers by a country like Saudi Arabia would have much greater damaging repercussions than wheat and meat boycott.
Desalinated water has become the lifeblood of Saudi communities. Most of the drinking and household water supplied to the country’s ten largest cities is desalinated. In 2006, Saudi Arabia supplied from giant desalination plants on its East and the West coasts 1.1 billion m3 of drinking and household water out of total drinking and household water requirement in 2006 of 2.2 billion m3.
The problem with Saudi water availability is not household water. It is irrigation water. Abandoning wheat growing is too little and too late. The campaign to reduce household water use, while important, is minor. Saving 30% of household water, as the campaign boasts, or 0.7 billion m3, is only 4% of irrigation water. To be serious about protecting the country's nonrenewable water endowment the growing of most produce should stop.
Settlement of the Bedouins
Ostensibly, in an effort to settle the Bedouins, the Saudi government promulgated in 1968 the Regulation for Fallow Land Distribution. Between 1968 and 1980 the distribution under the new law was 7% of the size of the land distributed during the following twelve years (1980-1992), the years during which the agricultural boom reached its peak. If the purpose of the Regulation was to settle the Bedouins, the size of the distributed land between 1968 and 1980 should have been much greater. Such history suggests that the 1968 Act was implemented more in the interest of agricultural production than the settlement of the Bedouins.
Enriching the ruling elites
The Saudi ruling elite is composed of four groups. These groups support the thousands in the ruling family in return for privileges and benefits. The four groups are: the Wahhabi religious establishment, the Bedouin tribal leadership, the major merchant families, and the military class. The first group lends the regime religious legitimacy; preaching on every turn: “Obey God and obey the apostle and obey those of authority among you” (the Quran, 4:59), along with attributed prophetic sayings like: “Hear and obey the emir, even if your back is whipped and your property is taken; hear and obey.” The second and third groups control the rank and file members of the business and tribal communities. Such a structure is particularly important in a country with no civil society organizations, labor unions, political parties, student and women associations, social clubs and the like. The military class defends the regime against local dissent.
It is thought that Saudi desert agriculture was a scheme to enrich these groups, their families and clients. Such is evident from three observations:
The first observation is the large scale of the wheat project. Between 1985 and 1993, Saudi wheat production grew well beyond domestic needsand the country’s storage capacity. By 1992, Saudi Arabia became the world’s sixth largest exporter of wheat. Had the objective been meeting local demand, the quantities would have been considerably smaller.
Secondly, the early participants in desert agriculture were investors, not farmers. They were absentee owners with little or no experience in farming. They had to be financially sound, with substantial landholdings. The promise of high financial returns from government subsidies to wheat growing enticed some of the country’s richest business families, mainly from the Riyadh and the Qassim Regions to underwrite the risk of the new adventure. They imported the resources from around the world; not only the engineers, the mechanics, and the farm managers but even the unskilled laborers, along with the pumps, tractors, harvesters, seeds, chemicals, and fertilizers to construct and maintain the hundreds of those once famous giant 1000-foot-arm pivot irrigation systems, seen from the air on approaching Riyadh or the towns of the Qassim Region.
Thirdly, the agricultural adventure did not start soon after the 1973 jump in oil prices. It was a decade until the program started in earnest.
While food independence and settlement of the Bedouins might have played a role in Saudi government’s drive toward food self-sufficiency, the early business investors became engaged in the adventure purely to enrich themselves.
In his "Cadillac Desert" Marc Reisner wrote: “Water flows uphill towards money.”
How was the decision to support desert agriculture made?
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is non-representative and non-participatory in its governance. Foreign suppliers (in this case, of agribusiness) closely associate themselves with the powerful elites. Schemes such as food self-sufficiency in the desert, which are unsound both economically and environmentally, are attractively packaged with nationalistic slogans. In the absence of political parties, a free press, environmental groups, or any other concerned groups, such as egalitarian nongovernmental organizations, it is impossible to introduce a balancing economic or environmental perspective into water policy. Consequently, there has been no effective dissent against desert agriculture and its seriously negative economic and environmental policies. On the contrary, the Saudi government, its propagandists, and apologists in the East and the West acted as if they were in a competition, praising this folly as a judicious strategy that achieved amazing results.
The oil economy and the nature of the Saudi political system provided the decision-making context. The narrowness of the Saudi decision-makers’ coalition enabled the unsustainable water policies of the 1980s and 1990s. The Saudi experience is an extreme case of a politically determined ecological policy with the negative tendencies of a poorly informed elite enjoying rentier economic circumstances.
The policy goal of irrigating even a portion of Saudi Arabia’s foodstuffs requirements was economically and environmentally damaging to the Saudi economy. Food self-sufficiency is a very dangerous dream for countries like Saudi Arabia to pursue. That billions of cubic meters of water from mainly nonrenewable aquifers have been and continue to be “exported” as virtual water is particularly irresponsible.
The recent Saudi desert irrigation projects were an aberration in the history of desert agriculture. Although politically challenging, creating the most favorable conditions for efficient allocation of water resources requires that projects be selected purely on a rate of return on investment basis in economies operating without government subsidies. Had such a criterion been applied to assessing the economic feasibility of irrigation projects in Saudi Arabia, the approach of the government would have been rejected in favor of higher return projects. The rejection would have saved nonrenewable water reserves. The end of inefficient farming is not negative for Saudi Arabia.
A final thought
As the fable of Saudi desert agriculture reaches its end, a footnote in the country’s history will remain. Alongside the tale of the Saudi ruling group that has accumulated enormous riches and engaged in some of the most profligate indulgences, there is the story of the one generation that squandered tens of billions of dollars on the fruitless quest to make the desert bloom and, in so doing, wasted the nation’s finite water inheritance without regard to their grandchildren.
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4:14:00 AM EST
Feeling Quiet
From Dust to Dust; or, Greening the Saudi Desert
Over the millennia, arid conditions prevented the development of settled agricultural communities of any size in the Arabian Desert. Since the early 1980s, however, Saudi Arabia spent enormous amounts of money and exhausted massive volumes of water from mainly nonrenewable aquifers ostensibly on achieving food self-sufficiency. On January 8, 2008, the Saudi government abandoned its food independence strategy and decided instead to import the country’s entire wheat needs by 2016. This article examines the events that led to the old and the new strategies and the lessons that may be drawn from a politically determined economic and ecological policy with negative tendencies of a poorly informed elite enjoying rentier economic circumstances.
A roller coaster performance
Farming is alien to the desert habitat and the culture of its peoples. Scant rainfall of 70-100 mm per annum constrained Saudi food production and population growth. Until recent decades, little or no groundwater was extracted because pumping technology was not available.
Having almost no expertise in settled farming, Saudi investors were induced by huge government subsidies to import the technology and the farm workers. Wheat growing was emphasized. Between 1980 and 1992, wheat production grew by 29 folds; from 142,000 tons to 4.1 million tons; making the Saudi desert the world’s sixth-largest wheat exporting country. Such quantity was greater than the self-sufficiency requirement of a country of 17 millions in population; or, its storage capacity of 2.38 million tons.
To achieve this big growth, the wheat-producing areas were increased by 857,000 hectares; or by 14 folds, from 67,000 hectares in 1980 to 924,000 hectares in 1992.
Starting in 1993, however, under pressures from low oil prices since the second half of the 1980s, from heavy spending on defense and security, from the cost of the Iran/Iraq War (1980-1988), from the cost of the 1991 Gulf War, and from the cost of maintaining the expensive lifestyle of some 4,000 immediate members of the Al-Saud ruling family the government had to scale down its wheat-growing subsidy program. On defense and security between 1981-1993, Saudi Arabia spent a total of US$225 billions out of US$420 billions in total oil revenues. On the 1991 Gulf war, it spent US$80 billions, and on the Iran/Iraq War, it spent US$25.7 billions. The ruling family is estimated to have cost US$4 billions per annum during the 1980. All this spending happened while Saudi budget deficits were at their height, adding up to US$130 billion between 1984 and 1992.
By the end of 1996, 76% of the new wheat growing surface added between 1980 and 1992 were abandoned, 650,000 hectares out of the 857,000 hectares. Wheat production dropped during the same period by 70%, from 4.1 million tons to 1.2 million tons. By 2005, however, wheat production increased to 2.65 million tons. On January 8, 2008, Reuters and other news agencies reported that starting this year purchases of wheat from local farmers would be reduced by 12.5%, with the aim of relying entirely on imports by 2016.
This dramatic rise and the equally dramatic fall of Saudi Arabia’s cereal production, reflect haphazard planning. The experience proved merely that throwing money to import the expertise and the machinery to extract mammoth volumes of water could make even a desert bloom, until either the money or the water runs out. No accounting, however, has ever detailed the full cost of this adventure in terms of money or water.
The financial cost
For the sixteen years between 1984 and 2000, it may be estimated that the assessable cost of Saudi agricultural development may be put at about US$85 billions, representing 18% of the country’s US$485 billions in revenues from oil exports during the period. This huge investment produced wheat at an average cost of more than US$500 per ton. During the same period, the international market price for wheat averaged about US$120 per ton. When the waste resulting from abandoning the newly reclaimed and irrigated lands plus four un-quantified government subsidies are added the cost might more than double. The first un-quantified subsidy is government’s price support to electricity and fuel, from which the farmers benefited. The second is the value of the concessionary borrowing terms on a total of US$9 billions granted to 394,000 loans by Saudi Agricultural Bank by 2000. The third is the value of 1.67 million hectares of government land given away between 1980 and 1992 under the 1968 Regulation for Fallow Land distribution, and which was used in farming. The fourth is the cost of the bureaucracy that the Saudi government had to employ in order to administer the new agricultural schemes.
The water cost
If money has become of late of no concern in Saudi Arabia, water ought to have been. In the searing desert sun, the water needed to irrigate a hectare of land is twice to three times the volume needed to grow the same produce under temperate conditions. Between 1980 and 1999, a gargantuan volume of water—300 billion cubic meters (m3), the equivalent to six years flow of the Nile River into Egypt—was used in Saudi Arabia’s agricultural adventure. Two-thirds of the water thus used is regarded as nonrenewable, according to estimates by the Ministry of Agriculture and Water (MAW). At this rate, it does not take a genius to predict that regardless of how vast Saudi nonrenewable water reserves might have been they will sooner or later be depleted if the extraction does not stop.
That the 1993 scaling down in subsidies was designed to conserve water cannot be supported by the facts. Despite the dramatic drop in cereal production, agricultural water use remained strong. Between 1994 and 2005, while the overall irrigated surface declined by 31%, from 1.596 million hectares to 1.107 million hectares water used in irrigation was reduced by 13% only, from 20 billion m3 to 17 billion m3. Furthermore, between 1990 and 1994, average agricultural water use was 12,225 m3 per hectare. Over the next five years, agricultural water use increased to an average of 15,230 m3 per hectare. In 2005, the average climbed to 15,760 m3 per hectare.
The rather marginal decline in agricultural water use between 1994 and 2005 and the persistent rise in the per hectare use of water was due to the fact that most of the water saved from growing less cereals was used to increase the growing of produce that requires greater volumes of water to grow than cereals; such as, animals, animal products, fruits, and alfalfa. Generally, one thousand tons of water (1,000 m3) is needed to produce a ton of wheat and 16,000 m3 of water is needed to produce a ton of red meat. Alfalfa requires six times as much water to grow as wheat. 5,000 tons of water is needed to produce a ton of chicken.
Saudi exports of virtual water
Saudi Arabia not only increased the production of high water using foodstuffs for domestic consumption, but it also has been exporting to neighboring city-states animals, animal products, vegetables, animal and vegetable fats and oils, beverages, and other high water using agro-commodities, though the export of alfalfa was stopped in 2000.
Foodstuffs are an encapsulation of water. Food is virtual water. Saudi food exports are synonymous with shipping away the country’s finite water resources. For the five years between 1997 and 2001, the volume of Saudi water used to produce the exported foodstuffs averaged 2.5 billion m3 annually. For the five years between 2002 and 2006, the value of Saudi foodstuff exports doubled in comparison with the value of foodstuffs exports during the previous five years. If the composition of the exported produce did not change, it would be safe to estimate that Saudi water exports in the form of foodstuffs between 2002 and 2006 averaged 5 billion m3 per annum.
To put 5 billion m3 of water in perspective, Saudi Arabia, which ranked third in the world in the use of household water (286 liters per day), needed 2.2 billion m3 for drinking and household purposes in 2006.
Generally, the volume of drinking and household water a country needs represents a fraction of its agricultural water needs. Of Saudi Arabia’s 19.8 billion m3 of water used in 2006, householders used 2.2 billion m3 (11%), agriculture used 17 billion m3 (86%), and industry used 0.6 billion m3 (3%). Such ratios are more or less typical.
That during the ten-year period between 1997 and 2006, an arid Saudi Arabia exported around 37.5 billion m3 of its finite water endowment, most of which was nonrenewable, is breathtaking. That the export of virtual water continues today unabated is incredible.
A guesstimate of water availability
Estimates of the day when Saudi nonrenewable aquifers would become depleted vary. One estimate using the M. king Hubbert technique might possibly be a helpful guide.
Hubbert’s theory, developed in 1956 for the oil industry, observed that in any large region, unrestrained extraction of a finite resource rises along a bell-shaped curve that peaks when about half the resource is gone. Hubbert found that a growth curve of the utilization of other finite natural resources should rise in a manner similar to those of the fossil fuels.
Water extraction from Saudi Arabia’s finite nonrenewable reserves has been unrestrained since the start of the country’s foray into agricultural production in the early 1980s. The volume of water extraction from nonrenewable aquifers reached a peak of slightly more than 14 billion m3 in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, the extraction volume dropped to 12.5 billion m3 and in 1996, it dropped further to 12 billion m3. In 2006, the extraction was estimated to be some 11.3 billion m3.
Using Hubbert’s theory, the period starting 1993/1994 might signify the midpoint in the volume of Saudi nonrenewable water reserves. Since 1980 was the year when water extraction from nonrenewable sources started in earnest, it might be considered as the starting date of the aquifers’ expected useful life. Prior to 1980, nonrenewable water extraction was insignificant.
According to Saudi Ministry of Agriculture and Water, the aggregate water extracted from the nonrenewable aquifers between 1980 and 1994 was 140 billion m3. Hubbert’s theory suggests that the volume of Saudi nonrenewable water before the heavy extraction had started was likely to be around 280 billion m3 and that the remaining volume of water around 1994 was 140 billion m3. On this basis, such a volume would last for 10 years, if the average extraction would be 14 billion m3 per annum. If, on the other hand, the average extraction would be 10 billion m3 per annum, then the volume would last 14 years.
Already, there is evidence of water quality degradation along with dwindling volumes of previously abundant aquifers. Natural springs which discharge many aquifers have dried up in most parts of the Western, Central, and Eastern regions along with seawater intrusion in areas of the East Coast. Also, due to poor quality sanitary and drainage systems, and the unmonitored use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides the water quality in most aquifers has become brackish.
The Saudi government’s embarrassing abandonment of a strategy propagated for thirty years as its pride achievement could be an indication of serious trouble with the country’s nonrenewable groundwater sources. Such an announcement could not have been possible unless the condition of the nonrenewable aquifers has reached perilous levels in terms of quality and quantity. The Saudi action lends credibility to Hubbert’s guesstimate that the day of reckoning is near.
The impossibility of Saudi self-sufficiency in foodstuffs
Saudi food independence is impossible to sustain. Saudi renewable water resources are insufficient and the country’s population growth is among the highest in the world. Between 1975 and 2004, the Saudi population grew by an average annual rate of 4.1%; compared with Arab countries, 2.6%; developing countries, 1.9%; OECD countries, 0.8%.
The Saudi population is forecast to increase from its size in 2006 of 24 millions to reach 40 millions in 2025. Given such a high rate of growth and, regardless of how large Saudi water reserves might be, Saudi food independence is impossible to sustain in the long run. It is only a matter of time before irrigation exhausts the recoverable contents of the aquifers.
An individual needs about 1,000 cubic meters of water each year to raise the food requirement of that individual. The composition of diet determines the volume of water embedded in food. The more meat, especially red meat, a diet contains, the more water embedded in food is consumed.
Saudi Arabia’s 24-million population in 2006 would need an estimated 24 billion m3 of water for self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. Despite using mammoth volumes of water over the past three decades and spending huge amounts of money, Saudi full self-sufficiency in foodstuffs remains as elusive as ever. In 2006, Saudi agriculture used 17 Billion m3 of water from all sources, leaving a gap of 7 billion m3; or 30%, to be imported. Between 2002 and 2006, Saudi foodstuffs imports added up to US$35 billions; an average of US$7 billions for each of the five years involved. During the previous five years (1997-2001) Saudi food imports added up to US$24 billions; an annual average of almost US$5 billions. As Saudi Arabia’s population grows, the water sufficiency ratio will correspondingly decline and food imports will increase.
As the Saudi population reaches 40 millions around 2025, Saudi water consumption embedded in foodstuffs would reach 40 billion m3. Even if, and this is a very big if, the volume of irrigation water remains unchanged from the 17 billion m3 in 2006, the proportion of food produced domestically to total Saudi food requirements would be 43%. Under the more likely scenario, however, as Saudi nonrenewable aquifers get depletedand Saudi agriculture becomes reliant on renewable water sources only, the ratio of Saudi food self-sufficiency in 2025 would be 12.5%, given MAW’s estimate of the country’s renewable water sources of about 5 billion m3 per annum.
Possible reasons for greening the desert
Why did Saudi Arabia pursue expensive agricultural development in the desert despite persistent and large budget deficits during the early 1980s and 1990s? Was it to achieve food independence, settlement of the Bedouins, or enrich the ruling elite? The answer is probably a combination of all these factors, but with a special emphasis on the enrichment of the ruling elites.
Food independence
Desert agriculture is not an intuitive choice for an economist. However, food independence in Saudi Arabia has a nationalistic appeal. It conveys a message of control over the country’s own political and economic destiny.
The misguided belief that home production was a means of securing the Saudi economy was successfully constructed by those making Saudi rural policy and water policy. Propagated in the national discourse as a well-planned strategy to insulate the country from the risk of a possible wheat boycott by oil-consuming, food-producing countries, desert irrigation was turned into a sacrosanct belief. The strategy might have been prompted by threats in the US media to withhold food supplies as leverage against unacceptable oil export and pricing policies, following the 1973 oil boycott and quadrupling of oil prices.
While independence in foodstuffs is a politically attractive slogan, it is a flawed policy. Wheat—indeed all foodstuffs—is not critical for national security. The inability to import, for example, desalination equipment, spare parts, and engineers by a country like Saudi Arabia would have much greater damaging repercussions than wheat and meat boycott.
Desalinated water has become the lifeblood of Saudi communities. Most of the drinking and household water supplied to the country’s ten largest cities is desalinated. In 2006, Saudi Arabia supplied from giant desalination plants on its East and the West coasts 1.1 billion m3 of drinking and household water out of total drinking and household water requirement in 2006 of 2.2 billion m3.
The problem with Saudi water availability is not household water. It is irrigation water. Abandoning wheat growing is too little and too late. The campaign to reduce household water use, while important, is minor. Saving 30% of household water, as the campaign boasts, or 0.7 billion m3, is only 4% of irrigation water. To be serious about protecting the country's nonrenewable water endowment the growing of most produce should stop.
Settlement of the Bedouins
Ostensibly, in an effort to settle the Bedouins, the Saudi government promulgated in 1968 the Regulation for Fallow Land Distribution. Between 1968 and 1980 the distribution under the new law was 7% of the size of the land distributed during the following twelve years (1980-1992), the years during which the agricultural boom reached its peak. If the purpose of the Regulation was to settle the Bedouins, the size of the distributed land between 1968 and 1980 should have been much greater. Such history suggests that the 1968 Act was implemented more in the interest of agricultural production than the settlement of the Bedouins.
Enriching the ruling elites
The Saudi ruling elite is composed of four groups. These groups support the thousands in the ruling family in return for privileges and benefits. The four groups are: the Wahhabi religious establishment, the Bedouin tribal leadership, the major merchant families, and the military class. The first group lends the regime religious legitimacy; preaching on every turn: “Obey God and obey the apostle and obey those of authority among you” (the Quran, 4:59), along with attributed prophetic sayings like: “Hear and obey the emir, even if your back is whipped and your property is taken; hear and obey.” The second and third groups control the rank and file members of the business and tribal communities. Such a structure is particularly important in a country with no civil society organizations, labor unions, political parties, student and women associations, social clubs and the like. The military class defends the regime against local dissent.
It is thought that Saudi desert agriculture was a scheme to enrich these groups, their families and clients. Such is evident from three observations:
The first observation is the large scale of the wheat project. Between 1985 and 1993, Saudi wheat production grew well beyond domestic needsand the country’s storage capacity. By 1992, Saudi Arabia became the world’s sixth largest exporter of wheat. Had the objective been meeting local demand, the quantities would have been considerably smaller.
Secondly, the early participants in desert agriculture were investors, not farmers. They were absentee owners with little or no experience in farming. They had to be financially sound, with substantial landholdings. The promise of high financial returns from government subsidies to wheat growing enticed some of the country’s richest business families, mainly from the Riyadh and the Qassim Regions to underwrite the risk of the new adventure. They imported the resources from around the world; not only the engineers, the mechanics, and the farm managers but even the unskilled laborers, along with the pumps, tractors, harvesters, seeds, chemicals, and fertilizers to construct and maintain the hundreds of those once famous giant 1000-foot-arm pivot irrigation systems, seen from the air on approaching Riyadh or the towns of the Qassim Region.
Thirdly, the agricultural adventure did not start soon after the 1973 jump in oil prices. It was a decade until the program started in earnest.
While food independence and settlement of the Bedouins might have played a role in Saudi government’s drive toward food self-sufficiency, the early business investors became engaged in the adventure purely to enrich themselves.
In his "Cadillac Desert" Marc Reisner wrote: “Water flows uphill towards money.”
How was the decision to support desert agriculture made?
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is non-representative and non-participatory in its governance. Foreign suppliers (in this case, of agribusiness) closely associate themselves with the powerful elites. Schemes such as food self-sufficiency in the desert, which are unsound both economically and environmentally, are attractively packaged with nationalistic slogans. In the absence of political parties, a free press, environmental groups, or any other concerned groups, such as egalitarian nongovernmental organizations, it is impossible to introduce a balancing economic or environmental perspective into water policy. Consequently, there has been no effective dissent against desert agriculture and its seriously negative economic and environmental policies. On the contrary, the Saudi government, its propagandists, and apologists in the East and the West acted as if they were in a competition, praising this folly as a judicious strategy that achieved amazing results.
The oil economy and the nature of the Saudi political system provided the decision-making context. The narrowness of the Saudi decision-makers’ coalition enabled the unsustainable water policies of the 1980s and 1990s. The Saudi experience is an extreme case of a politically determined ecological policy with the negative tendencies of a poorly informed elite enjoying rentier economic circumstances.
The policy goal of irrigating even a portion of Saudi Arabia’s foodstuffs requirements was economically and environmentally damaging to the Saudi economy. Food self-sufficiency is a very dangerous dream for countries like Saudi Arabia to pursue. That billions of cubic meters of water from mainly nonrenewable aquifers have been and continue to be “exported” as virtual water is particularly irresponsible.
The recent Saudi desert irrigation projects were an aberration in the history of desert agriculture. Although politically challenging, creating the most favorable conditions for efficient allocation of water resources requires that projects be selected purely on a rate of return on investment basis in economies operating without government subsidies. Had such a criterion been applied to assessing the economic feasibility of irrigation projects in Saudi Arabia, the approach of the government would have been rejected in favor of higher return projects. The rejection would have saved nonrenewable water reserves. The end of inefficient farming is not negative for Saudi Arabia.
A final thought
As the fable of Saudi desert agriculture reaches its end, a footnote in the country’s history will remain. Alongside the tale of the Saudi ruling group that has accumulated enormous riches and engaged in some of the most profligate indulgences, there is the story of the one generation that squandered tens of billions of dollars on the fruitless quest to make the desert bloom and, in so doing, wasted the nation’s finite water inheritance without regard to their grandchildren.
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