Securing Saudi Arabia's food supply - migrations, farms overseas & irrigation

From 25th to 29th November about 2.5 million Muslims from all over the world made the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The event triggered a man-made animal migration to feed the pilgrims. For the first time in nine years, some of the livestock was supplied by Somalia, as Saudi Arabia lifted its long term ban on imports of Somali livestock, which it had imposed due to concerns over health screening of the animals. The lifting of the ban meant that Somalia’s monthly livestock exports could double to 1 million animals, with 60,000 ready to be exported within a few days, for the Hajj. This is indicative of the scale of food imports to the Middle East for the burgeoning population and tourism, and the dependence on food exports for some poor African countries. Livestock exports make up 40 per cent of Somalia’s GDP, whilst Saudi Arabia spends $6 billion per year on food imports.


View Larger MapSomalia’s Bossaso Port will be upgraded to enable it to cope with the increased livestock exports. But other African countries are vying to increase their exports of livestock to Saudi Arabia and the supply chain could extend further into Africa. In 2008, a farmer in Nigeria’s Zamfara state said that he lost out on the opportunity of a contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 150,000 slaughtered rams per month to the Saudi Arabia government because of a lack of storage facilities at Nigeria’s airports. It was reported that state approval for the requisite cargo airport for exporting fruit, vegetable and meat to the Middle East and Europe was fast tracked, taking just 3 months.

Along with sourcing more food from abroad, Saudi Arabia has long standing ambitious programmes attempting to increase its own food production, up against the ecological constraint of desert conditions unsuitable for agriculture and depending on gargantuan irrigation schemes. This article by Kelly McEvers is about the environmental cost of producing milk in the desert, in temperatures of up to nearly 50°C in the summer. The Afu-Safi diary farm in Saudi Arabia originated in the 1970’s. It was modelled on a dairy farm in California, but is twice the size holding 38,000 cows. Each cow requires over 100 litres of water per day and oil drilling technology was used to reach aquifers beneath the desert and. The aquifer is running dry and the dairy has been given permission to drill deeper underground to another aquifer 1.6 kilometres underground.

But the wheat growing which was also dependent on this source of water is being phased out. Saudi Arabia’s Hail Agricultural Development Company (Hadco) stopped producing wheat in 2008 and is purchasing land abroad. Hadco has already purchased 9,239 hectares of land in Sudan, and is considering purchasing another 32,755 hectares in Sudan within the next five years to grow wheat, corn and other crops to be used for feeding livestock. In January 2009 Saudi Arabia received the first batch of rice produced abroad.

Saudi Arabia has shifted the emphasis from attempts at increasing food self-sufficiency to extending the supply chain to source more food from other countries. Middle East countries including Saudi Arabia, and Asian states, have purchased a total of over 20,230,000 hectares of land suitable for arable crops in Africa in the past two years, about ten per cent of the farmed land in Africa. This would secure food supply and stable prices for the wealthy importing countries. The likely outcomes for exporting countries like Sudan, which are unable to feed their own people, appear less favourable with widespread reports of aggressive land grabbing, lack of transparency over land deals and smallholders losing their land. There are reports, for example from the International Land Coalition, that Saudi Arabia is the most aggressive purchaser, establishing a chain of overseas farms at the scale of nearly 100,000 hectares. Saudi Arabia is also considering purchasing land in Ethiopia and in other regions outside Africa in Egypt, Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Attempts to irrigate the dry Gulf states for agriculture persist though. In 2008 it was reported that UAE is conducting a study into the feasibility of building at least 70 dams in the northern emirates in an attempt to channel water supplies for food production in the region.

Pomegranates provenance mystery

pomegranates
Originally uploaded by RoseBridger

I bought these from Sainsbury’s, a fresh pomegranate and some seeds packaged in plastic with a little plastic spoon. There was no country of origin label on the fresh version, not on the labels stuck on the individual fruit or the shelf, and I could not see it on the box. I asked a member of staff who found out that the label was on the back of the box and the pomegranates are from the US. In the UK there is a legal obligation to label single ingredient fresh produce with the country of origin, but as more of the ‘fresh produce’ aisle is taken up processed foods provenance information is being lost. The packaged version just says ‘produced in Egypt’ which could well mean the fruit was just packaged there.

Pomegranates are fiddly to get the seeds out without seeds and juice flying everywhere. I can understand pre-prepared versions of this fruit, unlike ridiculous pre-peeled oranges encased in plastic. The best way I know to eat a fresh pomegranate is to cut off both ends, score a sharp knife through the skin in a circle around the middle and then about six lines from end to end. Then gently tear the fruit into chunks, and it is quite easy to get the seeds out and peel off the layers of white pith. It is still a bit fiddly. So a comparison between the fresh and the packaged - the juice from the fresh was much darker red, the classic colour that pomegranates are prized for, not really sweeter but a more complex flavour with more to it than the packaged one, which tasted fine but the fresh had the edge.

Pomegranates are considered a ‘superfood’ with all sorts of health benefits like reducing risks of cardiovascular disease and packed with antioxidants but I get a bit annoyed with certain fruits being trendy as supposedly the healthiest with the price then being hiked up. Lots of countries are increasing their production and exports of pomegranates, so some info about that will be pomegranates part 2 posting at some point.

India's food exports boom, as 200 million people go hungry

rice rupees
Originally uploaded by RoseBridger

India has more starving people than sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 200 million classified by IFPRI (International Food Policy research Institute) as hungry, even though the country is the world’s biggest rice grower with surplus grain in government warehouses. A bold policy proposal ensuring the right to food, the National Food Security Act would entitle every rural and urban family to 25 kilos of rice or wheat per month at a price of three rupees. This proposal has been widely welcomed, but previous government initiatives to reduce hunger have not met the stated targets.

In contrast, government supported programmes to increase India’s food exports are evidently a higher priority than feeding hungry people, as many of the export targets have been met. Whilst India’s other key export sectors, including textiles and jewellery, declined in 2008, plummeting 9.9 per cent in November alone, agricultural and processed food exports are booming. APEDA (Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority) reported that agricultural and processed foods exports totaled 17.5 million tones valued at Crore 31,820 in 2008. This is a growth of 46 per cent by value compared to 2007. It is worth pointing out, however, that the export volume growth of 70 per cent, from 10.9 million tones to 17.5 million tones, was much higher than the revenue growth, so the revenues are actually declining per tonne of food that is exported. APEDA is anticipating 20 per cent growth in exports for 2009, and has set a target to double India’s agricultural exports from $9 billion to $18 billion within five years.

Many countries including the US are investing heavily in India’s food processing industry. It is claimed that India will soon host the world’s biggest food park, the Himalya 13 hectare food plant near Delhi Airport will produce supposedly healthy functional foods, meal replacements, and processed bars made from nuts and berries and grains. Contract farming will source oats from Rajasthan and Gujarat, but other opportunities for Indian suppliers will be limited as US interests in the plant will be supported with nuts, almonds, and berries to be sourced from California. The US EXIM Bank has supported the plant with concessionary rates for the import of the plant and equipment. This is extending the supply chain, and increasing the environmental damage of transportation, for the construction and operation of the fancy food plant itself, as well as the actual products.

Iraq’s oil pipelines

Iraq’s health care remains severely affected by war with ill-equipped doctors, filthy hospitals and lack of basic medicines even in Baghdad’s best hospitals. In contrast, gigantic infrastructure projects for exploitation of the country’s oil and gas reserves are fast-tracked fuel. The interests in these developments, and the pipelines, map the realpolitik of the invasion and ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq, behind the political posturing, but pass with little comment in the mainstream media outside dry reports in the business pages.

As a result of the first contract to emerge from Iraq’s oilfield auction in June, the country’s oil ministry has signed an agreement with British Petroleum and CNPC, China’s largest oil and gas producer and supplier, to develop the ‘super-giant’ Rumalia oil field. The foreign firms have the lion’s share of the development, which aims to boost output to 2.85 million barrels per day. BP has a 38 per cent stake, CNPC 37 per cent and Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation the remaining 25 per cent. UK firm Foster Wheeler is to build the country’s biggest ever oil refinery to process over 300,000 barrels of oil per day, complete with an export pipeline.

Back in June 2008, UAE based Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum’s LPG plants, complete with a 180km natural gas pipeline to fuel new power stations, was on fast track, and at $650 million the largest single private sector investment in Iraq since 2003. Now, Dana Gas and Crescent Oil intend to build a $60 billion Gas City in the province of Anbar, which has suffered some of the heaviest fighting since the US led invasion. Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki has identified gas from the Akkas field for possible export of 15 billion cubic metres via the planned Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to Western Europe, which aims to reduce dependence on Russian gas supplies, (see this article by Peter C Glover on the ‘international intrigue’ surrounding the Nabucco pipeline) or to Syria for power and fertiliser plants. The Province Governor, Quassim Al-Fahdawi is arguing that the first priority for use of the gas should be the local economy in Anbar, rather than export.

dates
Originally uploaded by RoseBridger

As pipelines are built for exporting fossil fuels, the Iraqi government is supporting a crackpot scheme aiming to produce biofuel from dates. It is estimated that Iraq’s production of dates could rise from about 350,000 tonnes per year to 900,000. So much for claims that new generations of biofuels will not compete with food supplies. Hunger is a pertinent issue for Iraq with the World Food Programme estimates that 930,000 Iraqis face food insecurity and an additional 6.4 million would be food insecure without the Public Distribution System.

Plastic food for your child's lunchbox

The UK has a problem of declining take up of school meals, in Scotland the proportion of pupils eating schools meals was down to 39 per cent earlier this year. One reason is the drive for healthier meals and snacks at school, the changing menus with the unfamiliar food means lots of pupils just go off and buy burgers and chips etc. In addition to competition from takeaway outlets which often sell greasy and overprocessed food, school meals have to contend with competition from heavily marketed products with the targeting parents for putting in their children’s school lunch boxes.

children's 'meal' - 3 years later
Originally uploaded by RoseBridger

I bought this product for a child’s lunch box 4 years ago in October 2005. It is from the Dairylea Lunchables range. The packaging is all about the chance to win an adventure weekend and activity toys, and has a cartoon character, a dancing cow that looks like its got BSE. Inside the actual ‘food’, encased in multiple layers of plastic, is less colourful. There is some ‘meat’ and some sort of pitta type bread, inside which lurks some processed cheese encased in its own layer of plastic, the type of cheese that doubles up as a toy as it can be torn into strips. It came with a concession to real food, a small carton of 100% orange juice, and some strawberry flavoured yoghurt. The rules on labelling mean that the use of the term ‘strawberry flavoured’, as opposed to ‘strawberry flavour’, means that it should contain at least a little bit of real strawberry and not entirely artificial flavourings.

I am keeping the product to see what will eventually happen to it. Three years later it looked much the same, I took this photo in 2008, now in October 2009 there is little discernible difference. I wonder if it will start leaking noxious gas if the plastic biodegrades before the food-like substance contents. I might open it after keeping it for 10 years, but suspect it will look much the same in 2015.

The Lunchables products have had their marketing claims challenged. In 2002, the ‘Harvest Ham’ product in the Dairylea Lunchables range won the dubious honour of the Food Commission’s Parents’ Jury Not In My Lunchbox award for the worst food product marketed for children’s lunch boxes, listing the product’s ingredients much more prominently than the small print on the packaging. One mother’s comment summed up the product as ‘Absolutely vile, overprocessed rubbish’. The manufacturer, Kraft Foods, was hauled up by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for the Lunchables range in 2007, upholding complaints that the advert breached clauses on ‘truthfulness’ and ‘substantiation’ in its claims that the product was ‘packed with good stuff’ and banned the advertisement from being used in future campaigns.