Virtual Water Export Accelerates; 17% Of Alfalfa Grown In Western US In 2017 Was Shipped Abroad
EDIT
Data obtained by Undark from the USDA — while self-reported and likely undercounted, according to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting — show that in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, 152 foreign companies have purchased more than 250,000 acres since 2000 to use for agriculture, from ranching to almond farming to vineyards. More than half of the acreage was dedicated to cattle and pork production, and companies from Mexico, China, and Canada were the top purchasers of agricultural land during this time period.
Some of these purchases have come under scrutiny before. In 2013, a Chinese company called Shuanghui International — later renamed WH Group — bought America’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods. The deal came with 146,000 acres of land in nine states. More than 33,000 acres are in Utah, which is currently attempting to increase its access to Colorado River water in anticipation of drier conditions. Two years earlier, two Chinese entrepreneurs purchased a 22,000-acre ranch in Utah for about $10 million, which they used to grow alfalfa for export to China. “If you continue to have this massive imbalance, where use is greater than inflows, these reservoirs that over the last 20 years have buffered the difference will go empty,” Udall said.
Almarai, which has purchased more than 15,000 acres in Arizona and California since 2014, has received a large amount of attention and pushback from local lawmakers and sustainability advocates. The company, which also owns land in Argentina and Romania, announced in 2014 that it would eventually import all of the alfalfa needed to feed its cows in order to “protect the natural resources in the Kingdom.” A 2015 directive from the Saudi government banned the local production of green forage for animals, for which precious groundwater would be used, on farms over 120 acres. A major draw for Almarai and many other corporations may be the easy access to water for landowners in states like Arizona and California. Water laws dating back to the 1850s, when White Americans first began pouring into the region, established a doctrine of what is called prior appropriation, which gave first-come-first-serve water rights for unlimited use to anyone who staked a claim, according to Cantor, the Portland State University professor.
In California, farmers access irrigation water from the Colorado River at a much lower cost than municipal users in cities like Los Angeles. In Arizona, rural areas outside of big cities like Phoenix and Tucson are not subject to groundwater pumping restrictions and are not required to report how much water they use. Companies notice these lax rules. “There’s concern that a lot of these large corporate farms are taking advantage of the fact that we have unregulated pumping allowed in rural Arizona,” said Kim Mitchell, a senior water policy adviser at the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates. The worry, she added, is that the companies “may not have the same level of concern for safeguarding long-term water supplies” compared to “the historic farming operations that have been here a while.”
EDIT
https://grist.org/agriculture/u-s-southwest-already-parched-sees-virtual-water-drain-abroad/
= new reply since forum marked as read
“There’s concern that a lot of these large corporate farms are taking advantage of the fact that we have unregulated pumping allowed in rural Arizona,” said Kim Mitchell, a senior water policy adviser at the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates. The worry, she added, is that the companies “may not have the same level of concern for safeguarding long-term water supplies” compared to “the historic farming operations that have been here a while.”
Oh really? Ya think?
