Posted on 03/30/2016 12:16:17 PM PDT by yoe
The Middle Eastern kingdom needs hay for its 170,000 cows. So, it's buying up farmland for the water-chugging crop in the drought-stricken American Southwest.
Saudi Arabia's largest dairy company will soon be unable to farm alfalfa in its own parched country to feed its 170,000 cows. So it's turning to an unlikely place to grow the water-chugging crop — the drought-stricken American Southwest.
Almarai Co. bought land in January that roughly doubled its holdings in California's Palo Verde Valley, an area that enjoys first dibs on water from the Colorado River. The company also acquired a large tract near Vicksburg, Arizona, becoming a powerful economic force in a region that has fewer well-pumping restrictions than other parts of the state....
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Of course, if we have another drought, there could be slim pickings, so they are guaranteeing a captive supply this way.
They’ll replenish if you force recharge water into them under pressure...
Here’s another movie that is applicable....
Network (1976)
Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.
The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.
K street Lobbyist have be busy while America is watching the circular firing squad and dancing the stars.
Maybe Congress can get busy doing something important like grilling Dr. Oz or debating light bulbs.
It is not about the money or economic efficiency. They purchase things that they want. Doesn’t matter how much.
The land has water rights. Stupid bald governor of California keeps telling us to not water our lawns, take fewer showers, stop washing cars, etc. And now he’s allowing foreign governments to buy our water for next to nothing.
And I’ve been hearing that water utilities such as dams are being handed over to Indian Tribes. There are 566 tribes now recognized by the government (even the Chumash Indians, who have been extinct for thousands of years.) The budget for these tribes rival that of the DoD (a guestimate because no accounting has been done.) The tribes are in talks with Middle Easterners to begin moving Arabs into these reservations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njTQ9Mm06qE
Farm land of any size and kind should never be transferred to a non American individual, business, or country.
AGREED! This ‘America for sale to highest bidder’ crap has GOT to stop. Maybe limit foreign purchases to buildings that lease office space ONLY and that’s it. Limit purchases to major metropolitan areas and absolutely NO purchases of land or companies allowed.
These are the same people that condone executing folks who sell land to a Jew.
Agricultural use today
Terrorist staging base tomorrow
Oh, it’s about economics, all right. Foreigners have been buying US farmland for a long time. It is a state’s right issue here, by and large. Saudis - and other foreigners - look to states with farmland practice protections, and states that allow foreign ownership.
http://farmfutures.com/story-foreign-buyers-cold-reception-0-130036
Normally I don’t question the Christian Science Monitor but this scenario is very unlikely. They may be buying up land to grow feed, but I don’t think it’s economically and environmentally sound to ship it 2000+ miles to feed cattle. If all they wanted was cattle feed there are lots of opportunities in Central and Southern Africa. Closer to home and easier to control.
Perhaps they’re going to raise some cattle here and export them to themselves.
I’m pretty sure they recycle water in the form of treated sewage for irrigation. They raise alfalfa to feed the dairy cattle.
I would suspect they are doing as you say, raising cattle to their own specifications and slaughtering them in a prescribed manner. Halal I think it is
“we should have picked our own cotton”
I think gator coined that phrase lol.
Al Jazeera tried getting set up there,it had to close down after a few years.
Saudi Arabia would actually be at a serious disadvantage in California,whether they intend to play by the rules or not-they will still be paying the piper.
I am not saying they are going to get fleeced but investing in land in California,is a fairly risky venture at this moment.
Not me, that phrase has been around for a long time.
You should have picked your own cotton,
you should have picked your own fruit and veggies,
and should have got your got some of your oil elsewhere,
I guess there is a lot of regret lol.
Especially when they have so much cheap oil to burn AND Lockheed Martin developed a nano-particle filter that uses 10% (or 1%) of the energy as standard desalinization filters. That reduces the power needed for desalinization and it could even be integrated into existing facilities aside from the heat based ones.
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