While the American southwest suffers under a worsening drought conditions, foreign-owned farms have been siphoning water from underground aquifers to grow water-thirsty crops like alfalfa, which ultimately end up overseas in order to feed cattle and other foreign livestock.
“You can’t take water and export it out of the state, there’s laws about that,” Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty told CNN. “But you can take ‘virtual’ water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in part from the use of water.”
Residents in Arizona’s La Paz County are particularly frustrated at the area’s ‘huge, foreign-owned farms’ which are taking advantage of lax groundwater laws that give agricultural use the upper hand, allowing farms to pump unlimited water underneath property they own or lease.
County supervisor Holly Irwin told CNN that getting the state to take action, or even acknowledge, the state’s dwindling water supply has proven a ‘frustrating’ exercise in futility.
According to Irwin, Middle East agriculture companies “have depleted their [water], that’s why they are here,” adding “That’s what angers people the most. We should be taking care of our own, and we just allow them to come in, purchase property and continue to punch holes in the ground.”
In fact, 80% of Arizona has no laws governing how much water can be drained by corporate megafarms, nor is their any way to track it, according to the report.
“The well guys and I have never seen anything like this before,” said longtime resident of Wenden, Arizona, Gary Saiter, who said a UAE-based company, Al Dahra, had been tapping into an underground reservoir which stores water built up over thousands of years.
www.zerohedge.com/commodities/foreign-owned-farms-draining-southwest-aquifers-feed-cattle-overseas