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Article: The high price of Riyadh's self-sufficiency drive: Saudi Arabia has achieved its aim of producing the crops it needs for its own food, but at what cost to its water resources?(AGRICULTURE)(Statistical data)
- Article from:
- MEED Middle East Economic Digest
- Article date:
- April 20, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 MEED Middle East Economic Digest. All Rights Reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Large circles of crops, sprinkled across a barren lunar landscape, are some of the oddities that air passengers see when looking down on the kingdom. Some of these circles are even visible from space. They are the result of a bold experiment: to develop agriculture in the country from scratch. The kingdom is now home to a sizeable arable sector and huge dairy and poultry farms, but there is a huge cost to be borne from all this activity: precious water reserves are being tapped, which Riyadh cannot afford to lose.
Taking advantage of the oil boom in the 1970s, the kingdom set itself the goal of self-sufficiency in food. Growth took off in the early-to-mid 1980s, ...