B1 · Intermediate
9 min
foodgeopoliticseconomicshistorywar
El desierto que no puede comer solo: la guerra y la seguridad alimentaria del Golfo
The Desert That Cannot Feed Itself: War and Food Security in the Gulf
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So this week, Iranian drones hit fuel storage at Kuwait International Airport.
And the headline was fire, was aviation, was the war.
But I keep thinking about a different angle entirely.
Bueno, mira, Kuwait es un país muy pequeño.
Well, look, Kuwait is a very small country.
No tiene agricultura.
It has no agriculture.
Importa casi todo lo que come, casi el noventa por ciento.
It imports almost everything it eats, almost ninety percent.
Ninety percent.
Right.
And when you hit the airport, you're not just disrupting flights.
You're cutting a food artery.
That's what I want to talk about today.
Es que no es solo Kuwait.
It's not just Kuwait.
Los Emiratos Árabes, Qatar, Baréin, todos dependen de las importaciones de alimentos.
The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, they all depend on food imports.
Es una situación muy vulnerable.
It's a very vulnerable situation.
Here's the thing, though.
This didn't happen overnight.
The Gulf states made a choice, over decades, to trade oil for everything else.
Including dinner.
Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Antes de los años sesenta, la gente en el Golfo comía dátiles, pescado, arroz importado de India.
Before the 1960s, people in the Gulf ate dates, fish, rice imported from India.
La dieta era simple, pero local.
The diet was simple, but local.
And then the oil money arrived.
And with it, supermarkets full of food from every corner of the planet.
Claro.
Of course.
Con el petróleo, Kuwait y los otros países del Golfo compraron todo: carne de Australia, frutas de Sudáfrica, cereales de Estados Unidos.
With oil, Kuwait and the other Gulf countries bought everything: meat from Australia, fruit from South Africa, grain from the United States.
Fue muy rápido.
It happened very fast.
Look, I've been to the souks in Kuwait City, in Dubai.
The abundance is extraordinary.
Mangoes from Pakistan next to Norwegian salmon next to Argentine beef.
All of it flown or shipped in.
A ver, el problema es el clima.
Well, the problem is the climate.
En Kuwait, la temperatura en verano llega a cincuenta grados.
In Kuwait, the temperature in summer reaches fifty degrees.
Es casi imposible cultivar alimentos allí.
It's almost impossible to grow food there.
Right, so the geography is genuinely brutal.
It's not like these countries just chose the easy path.
There's almost no arable land.
There's almost no fresh water.
The desert is not an excuse, it's a reality.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Kuwait tiene menos del uno por ciento de tierra cultivable.
Kuwait has less than one percent of arable land.
Uno por ciento.
One percent.
Y el agua del mar es cara de convertir, incluso con mucho dinero.
And turning seawater into drinking water is expensive, even with a lot of money.
So when a drone hits the airport's fuel storage, it's not a symbolic blow.
It's a practical one.
Because if planes can't refuel, food deliveries slow down or stop.
Bueno, los alimentos frescos, las verduras, las frutas, la carne, necesitan aviones.
Well, fresh food, vegetables, fruit, meat, they need planes.
No puedes esperar tres semanas en un barco con tomates frescos.
You can't wait three weeks on a ship with fresh tomatoes.
I mean, the sea routes are under pressure too.
The Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea.
The whole supply chain is getting squeezed from multiple directions at once.
La verdad es que sí.
The truth is, yes.
Es una situación muy peligrosa.
It's a very dangerous situation.
Pero estos países aprendieron algo después de la crisis del petróleo de 2008, cuando los precios de la comida subieron mucho en todo el mundo.
But these countries learned something after the food price crisis of 2008, when food prices rose sharply around the world.
The 2008 food crisis.
That's worth unpacking.
Because that year was when a lot of Gulf governments looked at their food bills and genuinely panicked.
Sí, mira, en 2008 el precio del arroz subió casi un ochenta por ciento.
Yes, look, in 2008 the price of rice rose almost eighty percent.
Muchos países pararon las exportaciones de cereales.
Many countries stopped exporting grain.
Egipto, India, Vietnam.
Egypt, India, Vietnam.
El mundo cerró sus mercados.
The world closed its markets.
And the Gulf countries, sitting on trillions of petrodollars, suddenly realized that money can't buy food that nobody is willing to sell you.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Entonces empezaron a comprar tierras agrícolas en otros países.
So they started buying agricultural land in other countries.
Arabia Saudí compró tierras en Etiopía y en Sudán.
Saudi Arabia bought land in Ethiopia and Sudan.
Los Emiratos compraron en Pakistán y en Kazajistán.
The Emirates bought in Pakistan and Kazakhstan.
The extraordinary thing is how little attention that got in the Western press at the time.
Sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf quietly buying up farmland across Africa and Asia.
Hundreds of thousands of hectares.
Bueno, y fue muy polémico.
Well, and it was very controversial.
Los agricultores locales en Etiopía perdieron sus tierras.
Local farmers in Ethiopia lost their land.
Hubo protestas.
There were protests.
Las organizaciones internacionales criticaron mucho estas compras.
International organizations criticized these purchases heavily.
Right.
Because the logic is understandable from Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, but from the village in the Ethiopian highlands being displaced, it looks very different.
La verdad es que sí.
Truthfully, yes.
Pero también hubo proyectos interesantes.
But there were also interesting projects.
Los Emiratos Árabes invirtieron mucho en granjas verticales, que son edificios con plantas cultivadas con luz artificial y muy poca agua.
The UAE invested heavily in vertical farms, which are buildings where plants are grown with artificial light and very little water.
I visited one of those in Dubai a few years back.
It was extraordinary.
Twelve floors of leafy greens growing in total darkness except for LEDs, in the middle of a desert city.
Es que es tecnología muy cara.
It's very expensive technology.
Pero los Emiratos la necesitan porque tienen tanto dinero como quieren y no tienen opciones naturales para cultivar alimentos.
But the Emirates need it because they have as much money as they want and have no natural options for growing food.
And there's a link here to water that I think is important.
Because vertical farms use a fraction of the water of conventional agriculture.
And water is even scarcer than land in the Gulf.
Sí, Kuwait obtiene casi toda su agua potable de plantas de desalinización.
Yes, Kuwait gets almost all its drinking water from desalination plants.
Si atacas el aeropuerto y las plantas de agua al mismo tiempo, la crisis es total.
If you attack the airport and the water plants at the same time, the crisis is total.
So you've got food coming in by air and sea, water coming from the sea through desalination, and both of those systems are now being tested by a war.
That's a profoundly precarious position.
Mira, los precios de los alimentos en Kuwait y en los Emiratos ya subieron mucho desde el inicio de la guerra.
Look, food prices in Kuwait and the UAE have already risen a lot since the war started.
La inflación alimentaria en la región es muy alta ahora.
Food inflation in the region is very high right now.
And who bears the brunt of that?
Because Kuwait and the UAE have enormous populations of migrant workers.
South Asians, Southeast Asians, people living on tight margins who can't absorb a thirty percent increase in the price of rice.
Es que tienes razón.
You're right.
En Dubai, por ejemplo, casi el noventa por ciento de la población son trabajadores extranjeros.
In Dubai, for example, almost ninety percent of the population are foreign workers.
Muchos viven y comen de manera muy austera.
Many live and eat very frugally.
I spent some time reporting in the labor camps outside Dubai.
These are men sending money home to the Philippines, to Bangladesh, to India.
When food prices spike, they eat less.
Full stop.
A ver, y hay otra dimensión histórica aquí.
Well, and there's another historical dimension here.
La crisis árabe de 2010 y 2011, la Primavera Árabe, empezó con el precio del pan en Túnez.
The Arab crisis of 2010 and 2011, the Arab Spring, started with the price of bread in Tunisia.
La comida cara puede cambiar la política.
Expensive food can change politics.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor who set himself on fire.
The immediate trigger was police confiscating his vegetable cart.
Food, dignity, economics, all colliding at once.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y los gobiernos del Golfo conocen esta historia muy bien.
And the Gulf governments know this history very well.
Por eso tienen reservas de alimentos para meses.
That's why they keep food reserves for months.
Arabia Saudí tiene reservas para más de cuatro meses de consumo.
Saudi Arabia has reserves for more than four months of consumption.
So there's a kind of strategic stockpiling that's been going on quietly for years.
Warehouses full of grain, flour, rice.
It's a buffer, but it's not infinite.
No, no es infinito.
No, it's not infinite.
Y si la guerra dura muchos meses más, estas reservas van a disminuir.
And if the war lasts many more months, these reserves will shrink.
Es una situación que los economistas de la región siguen con mucha atención.
It's a situation that economists in the region are watching very closely.
Here's what gets me.
The Gulf states spent the last fifteen years trying to solve a food security problem that they saw coming.
They bought land, they built vertical farms, they filled warehouses.
And then a war arrived and made all of it feel insufficient.
La verdad es que la dependencia alimentaria no se puede resolver en diez o quince años.
The truth is that food dependency can't be solved in ten or fifteen years.
Es un problema estructural muy profundo.
It's a very deep structural problem.
Necesitas décadas y una visión de largo plazo.
You need decades and a long-term vision.
And in the meantime, the drones keep flying.
A fuel storage fire at Kuwait International Airport sounds like a military story.
But at its core, it's also a story about lunch.
Bueno, y eso es exactamente lo que queremos hacer en este podcast.
Well, and that's exactly what we want to do in this podcast.
Ver detrás de los titulares.
Look behind the headlines.
La comida no es solo cultura, es también política, historia, y en este momento, es también una guerra.
Food is not just culture, it's also politics, history, and right now, it's also a war.