Water works

[Ground water is used to irrigate an alfalfa field, April 7, 2022, at Fondomonte's Butler Valley Ranch near Bouse. Mark Henle/The Republic]

Another snippet thrown to me by Microsoft when I fired up my laptop this morning, all about a water scandal in Arizona, the work of one Zeleb.es, whoever he or she might be, to be found at reference 1. As often seems to be the case with stories of this sort, a long running story which has been in the news for years, even if it had not percolated through to me. It had certainly reached our Guardian by 2016.

The short story seems to be that a Saudi diary company, Almarai, through a subsidiary in the US called Fondomonte, has been buying up cheap ground water from dry states in the west, in particular Arizona, using that water to grow alfalfa, a water intensive crop, then shipping the alfalfa back to Saudi to feed the cows to produce the milk that Saudi's like to drink. Water which is essentially a fossil fuel which is not going to be replaced anytime soon.

I have not done much checking, I have not found any pictures of bulk carriers being loaded up with alfalfa bound for Saudi Arabia, but it does appear that the Saudi's have taken advantage of carelessness in the management of scarce water resources in Arizona. Normal corporate behaviour.

PS: but I have checked the photographer. He does seem to exist and is to be found at reference 7.

References

Reference 1: Saudi company draws unlimited American water as West suffers drought - Zeleb.es, The Daily Digest, Microsoft Start - 2023.

Reference 2: https://azpbs.org/horizon/2022/06/saudi-water-deal-threatening-water-supply-in-phoenix/.

Reference 3: https://www.almarai.com/en.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almarai.

Reference 5: Fondomonte. The relevant subsidiary of Almarai; no website that I can see.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfalfa. An important crop that started out a couple of thousand years ago in what is now Iran and was taken to the United States by the Spanish colonizers.

Reference 7: https://www.markhenle.com/index.