If you use Google Earth to focus on the area north of Riyadh and in the Dawasir valley south-west of the Saudi capital, you will find green circles in the desert. They look a bit like flying saucers that have landed. In fact they are farms, and their peculiar shapes stem from irrigation machines that circle around a hub.
Subsidised agricultural schemes such as these made Saudi Arabia a net wheat exporter early in the 1990s – and added a new dimension to the notion of inefficient allocation of resources.
Those days will soon be over. Reserves of non-renewable fossil water in Saudi Arabia are depleting and the kingdom has decided to phase out water-intensive wheat production by 2016. Agriculture will be re-oriented towards more value-added crops such as fruits and vegetables, using water-saving technologies such as greenhouses and drip irrigation.
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