Land is the new oil, just ask Saudi Arabia.
O.K., Saudi Arabia has plenty of land, but it isn’t easy growing wheat and rice on largely rocky desert. So, the country has to import a large share of the food it consumes, and that’s a problem when the price of food soars.
Saudi Arabia has responded by buying wheat fields and banana plantations in places like Sudan, Pakistan, and Indonesia, and using it to grow food for dinner tables in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dhahran. In short, it’s using its oil exports to buy food imports.
It isn’t alone. In fact, the Silk Road countries rank among the world’s largest buyers of foreign farmland.
A recent report by Grain, a non-profit organization, highlights this point: the report cites 13 countries as large buyers of foreign farmland―12 of the 13 are Silk Road countries, including, China, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
