Saudi Arabia was once a grain exporter, but why is it giving up halfway?

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Saudi Arabia (hereinafter referred to as Saudi Arabia) covers an area of about 2.25 million square kilometers, ranking first in the Middle East and 12th in the world.

In the 1920s, oil was discovered in the Persian Gulf region. In 1933, the Mobil Oil Company of California of the United States obtained the right to explore oil in eastern Saudi Arabia, including oil exploration, exploitation, processing, transportation and sales, and Saudi Arabia has developed since then. Oil is the lifeblood of Saudi Arabia, with proven crude oil reserves of 36.35 billion tons, accounting for 16% of the world's reserves, ranking second in the world. Natural gas reserves are 8.2 trillion cubic meters, ranking sixth in the world.

Heaven gave Saudi oil, but also to the desert.

Saudi Arabia is located in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, bordered by the Persian Gulf to the east and the Red Sea to the west. 70% of Saudi Arabia's area is desert and desert, with an average annual rainfall of less than 200 mm, and the daytime temperature in summer is around 45 °C, and the maximum temperature can reach more than 50 °C.

Saudi Arabia is separated from Jordan by the Nefud Desert to the north, the Hijara Desert from Iraq and Kuwait, the Rub al-Khali Desert to the east and south by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, and the Dahna Desert in the middle. These deserts in Saudi Arabia are connected together, collectively known as the Arabian Desert, with an area of about 2.33 million square kilometers, second only to the Sahara Desert in the world.

Saudi Arabia has a forest coverage rate of 0.5% (2020), arable land accounts for only about 1.6% of the land area, about 3.5 million hectares (2015), and the only amount of arable land is scattered in the southwest of the Hijaz Mountains, and the development of agriculture is greatly limited. Saudi Arabia has about 3.785 million hectares of permanent grassland, accounting for about 1.9% of the land area, and the livestock mainly includes sheep, goats, camels, etc., and the grassland is simply not enough to eat.

Saudi Arabia has a population of about 32.18 million (2023), of which about 58.4% are Saudi citizens. With a population of more than 8 million (2022), Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, used to be an oasis in the Dahna Desert, surviving on the seasonal streams of the Arabian Plateau to the west. Today, Riyadh is a metropolis in the desert, the most populous city in Saudi Arabia and the most populous city in the Arabian Peninsula.

Figure - Riyadh

With the huge profits brought by oil, Saudi Arabia's wealth has grown rapidly, but the single oil economic structure is a hidden danger to the country's long-term development, Saudi Arabia is determined to blossom in various fields such as industry, commerce, tourism and agriculture at the same time, and has since begun to reshape the country's various industries in an all-round way, with agricultural cultivation as the focus.

Figure - Medina

In ancient times, people had limited ability to transform nature, and no one would try to grow food in this barren land, except for business and nomadism. However, agriculture is the foundation of a country, and as long as there is the slightest possibility of developing agriculture, all countries will not give up, and Saudi Arabia is no exception.

Although the Arabian Peninsula has not been a food-producing region for thousands of years, the Saudis have to go against the sky, and my fate is up to me, just because of money! In order to encourage agricultural development, Saudi Arabia has allocated large amounts of land to individuals free of charge, promising that farmers will be able to obtain permanent ownership of the land as long as they have cleared more than a quarter of the land.

As for domestic grain products, Saudi Arabia buys them at prices ten or even dozens of times higher than the market price, and the peasants are almost sure to make a profit. Under the high subsidies of Saudi Arabia, a large number of residents began to devote themselves to agriculture, and some speculators even did not hesitate to buy grain from abroad at low prices and then sell it to the state at high prices.

The farmland in Saudi Arabia is all round, because there are wells and water spray faucets in the middle, and the water spray range is a circle.

After just a few years of struggle, it is amazing that Saudi Arabia, a country covered by deserts and without rain for a long time, has not only achieved food self-sufficiency, but has also become one of the few major grain exporters in the Middle East, exporting thousands of tons of flowers to Europe every year.

Saudi Arabia doesn't even have a decent river, and agriculture relies entirely on groundwater for irrigation. Since 1970, Saudi Arabia has drilled more than 40,000 artesian freshwater wells, invested heavily in water conservancy projects, and built more than 200 dams on streams with little water.

In the early 1960s, Saudi wheat production was only 3,000 tonnes a year, but by the 1980s it had soared to 4 million tonnes. In addition to wheat, Saudi Arabia's production of flowers and dates has also increased significantly. Saudi Arabia has also built poultry farms and dairy processing plants, and in 1989 the output of broiler chickens was 2.6 million tons, and the eggs were 1.03 million tons.

In the 1990s, Saudi Arabia became the world's sixth-largest grain exporter, but Saudi agriculture was short-lived, declining in just 20 years. In the 21st century, Saudi Arabia is highly dependent on imports for food, and a myth of "turning deserts into fertile land" in the Middle East has since been shattered.

Beneath the façade of a thriving Saudi agriculture comes a hidden crisis. The basis of agriculture is fresh water in addition to fertile land, and it is water that is lacking in the arid and rainless Arabian Peninsula. Although there is groundwater under the desert, there are no rivers and rainfall on the surface to replenish it, so the water resources are used a little less, which is extremely damaging to the environment.

The overexploitation of groundwater resources in Saudi Arabia has led to the continuous decline of groundwater level in some areas, causing problems such as land subsidence, ground fissures, karst collapse, and salinization of underground soil.

Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil, and in the process of pumping groundwater, the oil layer is mixed with the groundwater layer, resulting in groundwater pollution, and some groundwater appears carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic and other substances. Groundwater pollution control and remediation is difficult, costly, and long-term, and once polluted, the environmental and ecological damage caused is difficult to reverse.

Figure - The premise of agriculture is that there is a good piece of land

Saudi Arabia is a country where crude oil is cheaper than tap water, and the waste of fresh water resources has led to high food prices, and Saudi Arabia's crops are struggling under the low price squeeze of grain exporters such as Russia and the United States. The contamination of groundwater is unbearable for Saudi Arabia, and drinking water to quench thirst has made it difficult for Saudi Arabia's groundwater agriculture to continue.

Today, Saudi Arabia retains only a small amount of groundwater farmland, but it is highly dependent on imports for food, and a once glorious "agricultural myth" has since become history.

Saudi Arabia abandoned agriculture and found another path, desalination.

Saudi Arabia accounts for about 20% of the world's annual desalination and is the world's largest producer of desalinated seawater. Saudi Arabia is building large-scale desalination plants in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. A desalination plant in the Persian Gulf that pipes desalinated water to the capital, Riyadh, 400 kilometers away. Saudi Arabia's desalination facilities consume a lot of oil every day and are so polluting that the construction of a solar-powered desalination plant began.

Pictured - Saudi Arabia's LINE project, all of which use clean energy

Saudi Arabia has issued its Vision 2030, which aims to increase the share of renewable energy to 50% by 2030. By 2060, "net-zero carbon emissions" will be achieved, that is, other countries will import Saudi oil, but Saudi Arabia will use solar energy. In the low-latitude desert area, where there is an inexhaustible supply of solar energy, this road may be more suitable for Saudi Arabia.