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.