Saudi Arabia's Quest for Food Security

Lippman, T.W. (2010). Saudi Arabia's quest for 'food security.' Middle East Policy, 27(1), pp. 90-98.
       Retrieved July 6, 2011 from LexisNexis Academic.

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Middle East Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2010

© 2010, The Author Journal Compilation © 2010, Middle East Policy Council

On the broad highway that runs

southeast from Riyadh, the

capital of Saudi Arabia, it takes

less than an hour to reach the

beginning of farm country.

The industrial zones peter out, and

suddenly date palms are growing on both

sides of the road, not in the random patterns

of an oasis but in the long straight

rows of cultivated orchards. Then the

first chicken hatchery appears, and soon

patches of green vegetables and alfalfa.

East of the farm town of al-Kharj are vast

operations of corporate agriculture, such as

Al Safi, the world’s largest dairy farm, and

Almarai, a dairy and juice conglomerate.

The landscape is unmistakably desert

and hardly looks promising for farming.

But agriculture is big business in Saudi

Arabia, from Hail in the north to the valleys

near Taif in the west to the terraced

hillsides of the southwest, made possible

mostly by decades of government subsidies

and irrigation with water pumped out

of caverns deep underground. In 2008,

agriculture accounted for nearly 5 percent

of the country’s annual GDP and employed

about 12 percent of the work force.1

Saudi state television’s “This is Our

Country” program features a documentary

celebrating the achievements of Saudi

agriculture: self-sufficiency in wheat

and poultry, impressive harvests of figs,

grapes and citrus fruits, increasing production

of olive oil. The so-called “Desert

Kingdom” is self-sufficient in potatoes

— which is saying a lot, given the amount

of french fries consumed at the ubiquitous

fast-food restaurants — and even produces

flowers for export.

Nevertheless, only about 2 percent of

the country’s enormous land mass is arable,

even with intensive irrigation and modern

farming technology, and the country in

modern times has always depended on imported

food. That dependence is increasing

as the young population continues to grow

at a rate that outpaces production. Facing a

probable 77 percent growth in its population

by 2050, Saudi Arabia is grappling

with the realization that its barren soil and

dwindling water supply will be insufficient

to feed all those people.2 A quest for “food

security,” in a world where competition for

food can only increase, has moved to the

top of the Saudi planning agenda.

Saudi Arabia’s Quest for “Food Security”

Thomas W. Lippman

Mr. Lippman is an adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the

Council on Foreign Relations. This article is adapted from his forthcoming

book, Saudi Arabia on the Edge: The Perilous Future of an American Ally

(Potomac Books, 2011).

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Lippm an: Saudi Arabia’s Quest for “Food Security”

The Saudis were spooked by the global

commodity crunch of 2007, when India,

their main supplier of rice, temporarily

banned exports because of its own shortage,

and the prices of corn and other grains

spiked upward. As prices rose for the longgrain

Basmati rice favored by Saudi consumers,

the government granted a subsidy of

$267 per ton in an effort to stabilize the market,

only to cancel it two years later upon

discovering that it was benefiting exporters

more than it helped Saudi consumers.3

Given the amount of cash per unit of

population at its disposal, it seems obvious

that Saudi Arabia would be better able to

deal with such a problem than other countries;

but the Saudis learned a lesson in 2007

when, despite their oil wealth, they were

unable to purchase all the rice they needed.

Imports fell from 958,000 tons in 2006 to

914,000 tons in 2007.4 That development

augmented a mistrust of markets that can be

traced to President Jimmy Carter’s cutoff

of U.S. grain sales to the Soviet Union after

the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. In 2007

and 2008, food-driven inflation imposed

real hardship on the millions of Saudis who

live below the official poverty line and

became a political issue, to the extent that

there are political issues in the kingdom.5

Combined with a growing awareness

that the country has mismanaged its very

limited supplies of water, the commodity

crisis prompted Saudi Arabia to change its

agricultural policies. The government has

abandoned its aggressive campaign for selfsufficiency,

scrapped support for crops such

as wheat and alfalfa that consume large

amounts of water, and increased support for

organic farming and vegetables for human

consumption. The generous subsidies that

enabled a country with no rivers or lakes to

become the world’s sixth-largest exporter

of wheat are being phased out. No longer

does the government support easy access to

its reserves of fossil water, the underground

aquifers from a previous geologic age that

delivered water to a thirsty earth. The fossil

water is like the country’s oil — when it is

used up, it is gone. There is no replenishing

spring or mountain runoff.

The agriculture ministry is emphasizing

scientific water management, waterconserving

drip irrigation, and an end to

the production of crops for cattle feed—

“more crops for less drops,” as Agriculture

Minister Fahd Bulghanaim puts it.6 And, in

a program that has stirred up global controversy,

the government is encouraging

private Saudi corporations to seek “food

security” by developing farm resources in

land-rich, cash-poor countries around the

world. In effect, the Saudis plan to explore

for and produce food overseas the way

American and other Western companies

explored for oil in the Arabian peninsula.

With its new policy, Saudi Arabia is attempting

to strengthen its position in what

seems certain to be a growing competition

for food among the nations of the Middle

East, including Iran and Iraq. Among the

“relative certainties” the world will encounter

over the next decade or so, according

to U.S. government intelligence experts,

is that “Continued economic growth

— coupled with 1.2 billion more people

by 2025 — will put pressure on energy,

food and water resources. The number of

countries with youthful populations in the

‘arc of instability’ [including the Middle

East] will decrease, but the populations of

several youth-bulge states are projected to

remain on rapid growth trajectories. The

potential for conflict will increase owing to

rapid changes in parts of the greater Middle

East and the spread of lethal capabilities.”7

A long-term comprehensive planning

document developed by the Saudi Min92

Middle East Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2010

Saudi businessman, Mohammed al-Amoudi,

has already committed his Saudi Star

Agricultural Development Company to

invest in the cultivation of rice and other

crops on 1.2 million acres in Ethiopia.11

The crops developed through these

investments would be exported, in whole

or in part, to Saudi Arabia. Some would be

used to establish what the government calls

a “strategic reserve for basic food commodities,”

including rice, wheat and barley,

“which satisfies the Kingdom’s needs for

food and avoids future food crisis.”12

This program and similar efforts by

other cash-rich, land-poor countries have

stirred fears of

a “land grab”

reminiscent of

the colonial era,

when European

countries took

over tropical

lands to grow sugar and rubber. Media

reports worldwide, circulated by a website

called farmlandgrab.org, have depicted

these programs as a threat to peasants and

indigenous populations of potential target

countries, especially those in sub-Saharan

Africa. Because some of these countries

are themselves dependent on food imports,

any plans to grow crops for export there are

extremely sensitive politically.

When the first cargo of rice from a Saudi-

financed farm in Ethiopia was delivered

to the kingdom in March 2009, London’s

Financial Times pointed out that “in the

past year the United Nations World Food

Programme has helped to feed 11 million

people in Ethiopia, which has suffered crop

failures and food distribution problems.”13

“Land Grab: The Race for the World’s

Farmland,” headlined an article in The

Independent, another British newspaper.

“Neo-colonialists are buying up agriculturistry

of Economy and Planning in 2003

asserted confidently, “We managed to

achieve total food security in less than a

generation.”8 By 2009, that confidence had

vaporized. Instead, according to a Ministry

of Commerce and Industry presentation at

an international conference in Austria in

2009, “The Kingdom’s leadership vision is

focused on facing the world food crisis by

taking sustainable measures and securing

food supplies for the Kingdom’s citizens

and residents.” 9

In January 2009, King Abdullah bin

Abdulaziz proclaimed a “food security

initiative,” backed by an investment fund

of 3 billion Saudi

riyals (about

$800 million), to

support investment

by private

sector Saudi companies

in agricultural

projects abroad. According to the

government, “The King Abdullah Initiative

for Saudi Agricultural Investment Abroad

aims at contribution to realizing national

and international food security, building

integrative partnerships with countries all

over the world that have high agricultural

potential to develop and manage agricultural

investments in several strategic crops

at sufficient quantities and stable prices in

addition to ensuring their sustainability.”10

In plain English, that means the Saudis

intend to use their capital to develop farm

projects in countries that have agricultural

potential but lack the money to acquire

the irrigation pumps, tractors and harvesters,

fertilizer, farm-to-market roads and

refrigerated warehouses needed for major

increases in output.

Among the targeted countries are

Sudan, Ethiopia, Vietnam, the Philippines,

Mozambique and Ukraine. One prominent

“Our policy is to help countries that

have land and water. . . . We have the

technology and capital. We will help

them to produce, for them and for us.”

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Lippm an: Saudi Arabia’s Quest for “Food Security”

includes investment in infrastructure —

irrigation, farm-to-market roads — and

thus creates jobs. The idea is to participate

in providing food for the world, not just

Saudi Arabia.”

In his view, the political problem of

exporting food from countries that depend

on food imports is manageable if the issue

is explained correctly to the local people.

Just as Egypt exports expensive long-staple

cotton to raise hard currency and uses

the money to buy cheaper cotton for clothing

and towels, he said, “The Philippines is

one of the biggest rice importers, but there

would be nothing wrong with exporting

long grain rice if the people there prefer

short grain and you import more of that.”16

A framing paper prepared by the U.N.

Food and Agriculture Organization for the

World Summit on Food Security in Rome

in November 2009 summarized the issue:

“Certainly, complex and controversial

economic, political, institutional,

legal and ethical issues are raised

in relation to property rights, food

security, poverty reduction, rural

development, technology and access

to land and water. On the other hand,

lack of investment in agriculture over

decades has meant continuing low

productivity and stagnant production

in many developing countries. Lack

of investment has been identified as

an underlying cause of the recent food

crisis and the difficulties developing

countries encountered in dealing with

it. FAO estimates that gross annual

investments of US$209 billion are

needed in primary agriculture and

downstream services in developing

countries (this is in addition to

public investment needs in research,

infrastructure and safety nets) to meet

global food needs in 2050.”17

al land in Africa — and local farmers could

be crushed unless there are international

rules to protect them.” The article described

what it called “a frantic rush,” led

by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,

“to gobble up farmland all around the

world, but mainly cash-starved Africa.”14

Well aware of the sensitivity of the

issue, the Saudis say their intentions are

benign and that their investments can help

the target countries as well as themselves

by increasing crop yields enough to free

up food for export while leaving behind

enough for the local people.

“Our policy is to help countries that

have land and water,” said Abdulaziz al-

Howaish, general director of the agriculture

ministry’s international cooperation

department. “We have the technology and

capital. We will help them to produce, for

them and for us.”

According to Howaish, “Saudi investors

are following the direction set by His

Majesty: it should be a matter of mutual

interest and emphasize the interest of local

people. It is not just a land grab. We want

it to be sustainable, to look at what the local

people need. There should always be a

clause that part of the output should go to

local people if they need it.”15

“We’re not talking about a land grab,

we are talking about investment in food

supply,” said Usamah al-Kurdi, a member

of King Abdullah’s appointed Consultative

Council who is investing in a new company

formed to participate in the food-security

program. “Who is talking about buying

land? We are talking about buying from

farmers, producing food. The concept of

buying land is wrong, in the same way that

foreign oil companies don’t own the land

where they produce oil. It’s investment of

capital and technology. You invest, buy

from local farmers and produce there. This

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Middle East Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2010

areas of the world and is likely to

grow worse owing to rapid urbanization

and population growth.”18

That report represents a synthesis of

the view of all the U.S. government intelligence

agencies.

Other studies have reported that competition

for access to commodities is also

being stoked by conversion of cropland

to biofuel production and by a growing

number of people worldwide with enough

money to purchase food beyond traditional

diets — imported

dairy products, for

example, instead

of what is available

from familyowned

livestock.

As a recent

Canadian study

of the farmland

investment phenomenon

noted,

“Access to land without water is pointless

for agricultural investments. In essence,

what are often described now as land grabs

are really water grabs: the purchase or

long-term lease of land in order to obtain

the water rights that come with the land

under domestic law or with the investment

contract itself.”19

If there is any country that has “land

without water,” it is Saudi Arabia, and the

Saudis recognize that they have mismanaged

what little water they have. The wheat

subsidy program that enabled Saudi Arabia

to become the world’s sixth-largest exporter,

for example, sucked up billions of gallons

of nonrenewable fossil water and shipped it

out of the country. Some studies have found

that as much as 40 percent of the water sent

through the country’s pipes and watermains

According to the Saudi government,

that is exactly the challenge that King

Abdullah’s initiative is intended to address.

As outlined by government officials

and potential Saudi investors, it would be

a partnership between the Saudi government

and private-sector companies. The

government would negotiate agreements

with host countries setting the terms of

investment and specifying the conditions

under which the host country could cut

off exports in emergencies. It would also

provide aid to the host countries to build

roads and other

infrastructure

projects needed

to facilitate farm

development. It

would be up to

private companies

to lease the

land, hire local

workers, provide

equipment and

fertilizer, and move the crops to market.

This is not entirely a new idea — Egyptians

have long fantasized about what they

could do if they could marry their agricultural

expertise to Libyan capital and Sudanese

land — and the Saudis are hardly alone

in their anxiety about future food supplies.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council in its

“Global Trends 2025” report said,

“Experts currently consider 21

countries with a combined population

of about 600 million to be either

cropland- or freshwater-scarce. Owing

to continuing population growth, 36

countries, home to about 1.4 billion

people, are projected to fall into this

category by 2025.... Lack of access

to stable supplies of water is reaching

unprecedented proportions in many

The kingdom has invested more

than any other country in the

desalination of seawater, but

almost all water produced through

desalination is needed for human

consumption, leaving little for

watering crops and livestock.

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Lippm an: Saudi Arabia’s Quest for “Food Security”

try is already the world’s biggest importer,

the government is offering subsidies to

dairy farmers and the owners of sheep and

goats to switch to a high-protein manufactured

feed. Vegetable production is shifting

from open fields, where water evaporates,

to greenhouses.

Elimination of the wheat subsidies was a

difficult decision for the government because

it represented the large-scale failure of a

policy to which the kingdom had been committed

for three decades. The subsidies for

wheat and other crops originally were conceived

less as a stimulus to food production

than as a means of keeping village and farm

populations in place. That battle has largely

been lost as the population has migrated to

the cities. Moreover, the wheat subsidy program

was riddled with fraud because wheat

merchants passed off imported wheat, which

was not subsidized, as a domestic product in

order to collect the subsidy.22

With the subsidies on their way out,

Saudi Arabia resumed importing wheat in

2009 after a hiatus of more than 25 years.

By 2016, when all subsidies have been

eliminated, the country will need to import

about 3.5 million metric tons per year.23

The policy revisions do not mean that

the government is reducing its overall

support for agriculture. On the contrary,

according to the U.S.-Saudi Arabia Business

Council, it has “earmarked more than

$28 billion worth of agricultural investment

projects through 2020.”24 But it is

changing the mix of crops and products

it will support to emphasize those that

consume less fresh water. One of the stated

objectives is to become the world’s biggest

exporter of shrimp through aquaculture

projects on the Red Sea coast.

Despite some grumbling from landowners

who were cashing in on the wheat

program, most elements of the revised

is lost to leakage and evaporation. And with

economic development has come increased

use of water for modern bathrooms, washing

machines and dishwashers.

The kingdom has invested more than

any other country in the desalination of

seawater, but almost all water produced

through desalination is needed for human

consumption, leaving little for watering

crops and livestock. “Today, the Kingdom

is the largest producer of desalinated water

in the world, manufacturing nearly 3 million

cubic meters of water daily (cum/d),”

according to a recent report by the U.S.-

Saudi Arabia Business Council, which

promotes bilateral trade and investment.

But demand “is expected to reach 10 million

cum/d,” the report said.20

Nor is water relief available from

Saudi Arabia’s mostly arid neighbors.

According to a study published by the

Population Reference Bureau, “twelve

of the world’s 15 water-scarce countries”

— those that have “less than 1,000 cubic

meters of renewable fresh water per

person per year” — are in the Middle East

and North Africa. Even neighboring Iraq,

watered since the beginning of history

by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and

formerly a food exporter, is now plagued

by drought and importing food because

upstream Syria and Turkey use more of

those river waters for themselves. “Falling

agricultural production means that Iraq,

once a food exporter, will this year have to

import nearly 80 percent of its food,” The

Los Angeles Times reported in 2009. 21

For all these reasons, a consensus has

emerged in Saudi Arabia about the need to

recast its agricultural policies.

Wheat exports have ceased, and production

is being reduced by 12.5 percent a

year. To reduce consumption of alfalfa and

barley for animal feed, of which the coun96

Middle East Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2010

Sugar Company in Sudan. “About $1 billion

has been invested and we have not

seen one kilo of sugar,” he said, because

Kenana, while successful, does not meet

all the demand in Sudan.25

Another skeptic is Turki Faisal al-

Rasheed, the outspoken chairman of the

food conglomerate Golden Grass, Inc.,

and a sometime newspaper columnist.

Al-Rasheed thinks the farm investment

program is unlikely to succeed and, worse,

represents a bad policy decision by the

Saudi government. In his view, the country

should encourage more farm production

at home, not less, to insulate itself from

political upheaval, natural disasters, inexorable

commodity-price inflation worldwide

and even domestic unrest. Those are the

reasons France and Germany subsidize

domestic agriculture, he said.

“The only way you could enhance security

and fight poverty is through agriculture,”

he said. “You need to keep those rural

areas…inhabited. Keep people in their villages.

If they go below sustainable figures,

those villages will be ghost towns. When

the rural people move to a city, you have

urban poverty, drugs, prostitution, crime. So

agriculture is a form of social security.”

Al-Rasheed argues that the country’s

oil industry will never employ more than

3 percent of the labor force and that the

automated petrochemical plants to which

the government is hitching the country’s

economic future will also employ relatively

few workers. “So what are you going to

do with the other 96 or 97 percent of the

people? What are you going to do with

your labor, your 60 percent [of the population]

below the age of 18?”

Agriculture, he said, “is not just a

business, it’s multifunctional. It’s a social

function, it’s food security, you are in the

distribution of wealth to achieve security.

policies appear to be noncontroversial. But

there is a good deal of vocal opposition to

the foreign investment program from business

executives and economists who doubt

that it is feasible or even truly necessary.

They say that investing in turbulent countries

such as Sudan is more trouble than it

is worth, and that a better solution would

be to strike long-term deals with stable suppliers

such as Canada and Australia. Saudi

Arabia might well have to compete with

other buyers for such deals, they argue, but

the kingdom has the money to outbid them.

“In these foreign investments, in Sudan

or Ethiopia or Ukraine, who is going

to secure the investment against political

risk or flood or whatever?” asked Fawaz

al-Alamy, who negotiated Saudi Arabia’s

entry into the World Trade Organization

and is now a director of a major food and

food-processing company. “I would love

to see these projects succeed, but I don’t

believe it. Profit margins are already small

in the food business. I’d rather have agreements

with credible countries like New

Zealand and Canada — they produce without

help from us; we buy, we have stable

arrangements with no investment risk.”

That also is the policy of the U.S. government,

which would prefer to see Saudi

Arabia purchase whatever wheat it needs

from U.S. suppliers, perhaps through longterm

“oil for food” arrangements, according

to American officials.

Al-Alamy said WTO rules specifically

permit countries to cut off agricultural

commodity exports in times of shortage, so

that “when you have a crisis any country

has the right to prevent exportation, and

[the result is] its people are eating food

you paid to produce.” He said his skepticism

was fueled by experience. Several

years ago, he “helped put together” Saudi

and Kuwaiti funding to build Kenana

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Lippm an: Saudi Arabia’s Quest for “Food Security”

international food conference in Austria in

the spring of 2009, “With the beginning of

the world economic crisis in the last quarter

of 2008, food prices started to decline.

This sign is not an indicator for future

abundance in such products. Because it is a

long-term strategy, King Abdullah’s initiative

had to go on as planned.”29

Indeed, the food numbers are already

stark. In addition to the wheat it will be importing

in ever-increasing quantities, Saudi

Arabia is already the world’s second-largest

importer of rice after Nigeria (Iran is fifth)

and consumes 45 percent of all the feed

barley traded in global markets.30 The Saudis

are meat-eaters and because of the shortage

of grazing land must import — and feed —

millions of sheep each year. And during the

annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the

Saudi government assumes the additional responsibility

of providing food and water for

more than two million people for a month.

There is nothing inherently problematic

about being dependent on imports for any

particular product or commodity. Japan imports

virtually all its oil; the United States

imports all its television sets. But, as Saudis

often observe, no product or commodity

carries the immediacy or political sensitivity

of food. As one put it in a private conversation,

“You can postpone buying a TV; you

can’t decide you will eat next year.”

Theoretically, the Saudi Food Security

Initiative, backed by large amounts of

cash, could contribute to a global solution

to the looming commodity-shortage

problem by stimulating large increases

in agricultural output in underperforming

agrarian countries such as Ethiopia

and Mozambique. If not, it will become

increasingly urgent to create other negotiated

international agreements that could

stave off a competition for food that would

inevitably pit countries against each other.

Whoever wants to be there [in rural communities],

you should give them

agriculture jobs.”26

Al-Rasheed will not prevail in the

policy argument as long as Abdullah is

king, because the monarch is committed to

the overseas investment initiative. But he

and other experts predict that the initiative

will succeed only marginally, if at all,

because of political and economic realities

in global markets and in the host countries.

John Sfakianakis, a development specialist

who is chief economist of Saudi Fransi

Bank, and Brad Bourland, a longtime resident

of Saudi Arabia who is chief economist

of Jadwa Investments, both dismissed

the entire program as “a fad.”27

Indeed, of the many announced and

proposed deals reported in news media,

only a relative handful are actually being

implemented. According to a study by

Canada’s International Institute for Sustainable

Development, “In 2009 many of

the short-term factors that were present in

2008 (with the exception of the financial

crisis) have temporarily disappeared. As

a result, and combined with the impacts

of the financial crisis and accompanying

credit restrictions, the impetus to conclude

deals is showing early signs of fading.”

As an example, the study said that an

announced $4.3 billion deal by 15 Saudi

investors organized by the Saudi Binladin

Group in 2008 to develop 500,000 hectares

in Indonesia for the production of the

long-grain Basmati rice favored by Saudi

consumers has been scrapped.28

The skepticism, however, applies only

to the proposed solution for the problem,

not to the existence of the problem itself.

No one doubts that Saudi Arabia will face

increasingly urgent food- and water-supply

problems in the next two or three decades.

As an agriculture ministry delegate told an

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Middle East Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2010

1 U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council, The Agriculture Sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2008), p. 1.

2 Unless otherwise noted, population figures and estimates are from the Population Reference Bureau, Washington

D.C., at www.prb.org.

3 See news articles at http://www.riceonline.com/home.shtml.

4 U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council, The Agriculture Sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2008), p. 2.

5 For an overview of poverty in Saudi Arabia, see Kim Murphy, “Saudis’ Quicksand of Poverty,” Los Angeles

Times, May 16, 2003. According to Abdelmohsen Al-Akkas, former minister of social welfare, more than

2 million Saudi citizens subsist entirely on cash payments from the government (author’s interview, Riyadh,

May 2008).

6 The quotation appears in “Cultivating Sustainable Agriclture,” an article in special advertising section promoting

Saudi Arabia, Foreign Affairs, November-December 2007.

7 U.S. National Intelligence Council, “Global Trends 2025,” available at http://www.dni.gov/nic/

PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf.

8 Saudi Arabia Ministry of Economy and Planning, “Saudi Arabia: Long-Term Strategy 2025,” section 3.1.2,

part d.ii, online at www.undp.org.SA/SA/documents/ourwork/pr/long_term_strategy_2025.pdf.

9 See www.agritrade.org/events/spring2009seminar.html.

10 See http://www.mofa.gov.sa/Detail.asp?InSectionID=3981&InNewsItemID=88796.

11The Saudi Star project was widely reported in the regional press; see, for example, “Les Visées de l’Arabie

Saoudite sur les terres fertiles du continent,” Jeune Afrique, December 1, 2009. Collected articles are at www.

farmlandgrab.org.

12 The quotation is from a presentation at an agricultural trade policy conference in Salzburg, Austria, in May

2009, available online at www.agritrade.org/events/spring2009seminar.html.

13 Financial Times, March 4, 2009.

14 The Independent, May 3, 2009.

15 Author’s interview, Riyadh, October 2009.

16 Author’s interview, Riyadh, October 2009.

17 Text at http://farmlandgrab.org/8833

18 U.S. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (November 2008).

19 Carin Smaller and Howard Mann, “A Thirst for Distant Lands: Foreign Investment in Agricultural Land

and Water,” Winnipeg, International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2009, p. 3.

20 U.S.-Saudi Business Brief, Vol. 15, No. 5, p. 11.

21 See Liz Sly, “Iraq in Throes of Environmental Catastrophe, Experts Say,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2009.

22 For details, see Helen Metz, Saudi Arabia: A Country Study, published by the Library of Congress in 1992,

and Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage (Westview Press, 2004), Ch. 10.

23 U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service, GAIN Report No. SA8003, Feb. 19, 2008.

24 U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council, The Agriculture Sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2008), p. 1.

25 Author’s interview, Riyadh, October 2009.

26 Author’s interview, Riyadh, October 2009.

27 Author’s interviews, Riyadh, October 2009.

28 Op. cit. note 18, p. 4.

29 Slides of the Saudi presentation are at www.agritrade.org/events/spring2009/seminar.html.

30 On rice, see http://internationaltradecommodities.suite101.com/article.cfm/rice_import_dependent_countries;

on barley, see the slide presentation by Taha Alshareef of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry

explaining the King Abdullah Initiative at www.agritrade.org/events/spring2009seminar.html.

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