Abdullah Al-Misnid, a faculty member at the Geography Department of Al-Qasim University, has cautioned against the irrational expansion of palm farming in the Kingdom given the scarce water resources at the country’s disposal.

He said that the existing palm trees in the Kingdom are sufficient to meet the demands of the country till 2037.

A survey conducted in 2007 revealed that the volume of date production stands at 983,000 tons and with the Saudi population estimated to be 17 million, it translates into 160 grams of dates per individual per day, or 11 dates per day.

Part of the date production is exported and some is used as fodder for animals, he said, adding that for each single date exported, the water utilized for its production is estimated to be six cubic meters. In addition, the amount of water used for irrigating date palms is 10 times more than what is required for wheat cultivation, he said, stressing that it doesn’t augur well for the Kingdom’s groundwater resources.

Reeling out statistics, Al-Misnid said there are 23 million palm trees in the Kingdom, requiring a minimum water consumption of 920 billion liters annually. This water supply is sufficient to satisfy the Saudi population’s consumption of water for 140 days.

Al-Misnid said the Kingdom began importing wheat when it realized that this would result in conservation of water. “We can import wheat, store it for six months at a time, and come up with a national emergency plan for wheat cultivation when needed.

This will not take more than six months and will allow us to achieve food security as well as maintain our water resources, which is our main objective,” he said.

Stating that fodder was a greedy produce, since it uses much more water than wheat, Al-Misnid said “We prevented our farmers from planting wheat to maintain groundwater resources, and yet we are planting fodder for animals.

Moreover, we limited wheat cultivation and supported palm farming, even though the later consumes more water. My advice is to gradually reduce palm farming by decreasing the allocation of land plots by 10 percent every year for the next five years.”

He also encouraged the government to invest in agricultural projects in neighboring countries that are rich in water resources in order to gradually restore groundwater levels, since the demand for water in the agricultural sector constitutes 86 percent of the total demand for water resources.

The Arab Peninsula has been suffering from droughts for the past 10,000 years.

Modern agriculture depends on groundwater, which is scarce, and the green house effect has raised temperatures in the Kingdom and the rest of the world, pushing the demand for water, he added.