Koch Talks to AZPM About the Connections Between Arizona and the Arabian Peninsula

September 4, 2024

AZPM

Natalie Koch

Geography & the Environment Department

Central Asia & the Caucasus Initiative

Middle Eastern Studies Program

Agriculture

Middle East & North Africa

United States

Water

AZPM

Natalie Koch

The history of Arizona's relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Arabian peninsula starts with a pre-Civil-War military program involving camels run by Jefferson Davis. It went on to involve the state's first college professor, an attempt to launch a new cash crop that became a common tree in the state, and much more. All of that lead to the most recent chapter, when monarchs began seeing Arizona as a place to grow thirsty crops like alfalfa as they exploited weak water laws in the state's rural places.

What makes Arizona particularly appealing to Fondomonte, a subsidiary of the Saudi dairy company Almarai that owns 10,000 acres in La Paz County's Butler Valley and produces alfalfa that is shipped overseas to feed cows, “is the fact that La Paz County doesn't have proper, I would call it proper, regulation on groundwater tapping,” says Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment.

“They can tap as much water as they want from the aquifers without any kind of regulation, all they need to do is have permission to drill new wells. And so when the Saudis took over what was already an alfalfa operation, they applied for 15 new well permits, and they got those permits,” Koch says.

Listen to the full interview on AZPM, “From date palms to alfalfa: How Arizona became fertile ground for Saudi farms.”