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Disks of alfalfa sprawl across the Rub’ al-Khali of Saudi Arabia, one of the most extreme deserts in the world, thanks to center-pivot irrigation. Invented in Nebraska in the 1950s, the center-pivot system distributes water, and sometimes fertilizer, from the central point to an elevated irrigation pipe on wheels that rotates around the circle. Here, the water came from wells tapping into fossil-water aquifers. A legume forage crop, alfalfa has a higher protein content than grass hays but requires significant precipitation—either natural or man-made. To conserve dwindling water supplies, Saudi Arabia banned the cultivation of alfalfa in 2019, and today this part of Wadi Dawasir is sandy desert once again. The country currently imports alfalfa to feed the cows in its megadairies, much of it from the Lower Colorado River Valley in California and Arizona. At Al-Faw, about 60 miles to the south of the alfalfa fields, Steinmetz encountered a stalled truck carrying fodder.

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Disks of alfalfa sprawl across the Rub’ al-Khali of Saudi Arabia, one of the most extreme deserts in the world, thanks to center-pivot irrigation. Invented in Nebraska in the 1950s, the center-pivot system distributes water, and sometimes fertilizer, from the central point to an elevated irrigation pipe on wheels that rotates around the circle. Here, the water came from wells tapping into fossil-water aquifers. A legume forage crop, alfalfa has a higher protein content than grass hays but requires significant precipitation—either natural or man-made. To conserve dwindling water supplies, Saudi Arabia banned the cultivation of alfalfa in 2019, and today this part of Wadi Dawasir is sandy desert once again. The country currently imports alfalfa to feed the cows in its megadairies, much of it from the Lower Colorado River Valley in California and Arizona. At Al-Faw, about 60 miles to the south of the alfalfa fields, Steinmetz encountered a stalled truck carrying fodder.

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