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Migrant laborers harvest tomatoes on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali. The oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia has spent the last sixty years making some 9,300 square miles of desert bloom with center-pivot irrigation systems tapping aquifers like the Al-Wajid, a nonrenewable fossil water deposit more than thirty thousand years old. By the early 2000s, many were depleted, oases that had been wet since biblical times dried up, and the kingdom lost half of its irrigated lands. Hydrologists estimate the Al-Wajid aquifer has fallen more than 656 feet due to excessive pumping and many of the center-pivots have been abandoned. The aquifer could run dry in some areas in the next ten to fifteen years. Given these challenging conditions, Saudi Arabia imports up to 80 percent of its food needs, including two-thirds of its tomatoes.

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STNMTZ_20020201_36.TIF
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© 2002 George Steinmetz
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Migrant laborers harvest tomatoes on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali. The oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia has spent the last sixty years making some 9,300 square miles of desert bloom with center-pivot irrigation systems tapping aquifers like the Al-Wajid, a nonrenewable fossil water deposit more than thirty thousand years old. By the early 2000s, many were depleted, oases that had been wet since biblical times dried up, and the kingdom lost half of its irrigated lands. Hydrologists estimate the Al-Wajid aquifer has fallen more than 656 feet due to excessive pumping and many of the center-pivots have been abandoned. The aquifer could run dry in some areas in the next ten to fifteen years. Given these challenging conditions, Saudi Arabia imports up to 80 percent of its food needs, including two-thirds of its tomatoes.

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