First It Was Kows To Kazhakstan, Now It's Quows To Qater

Qatar has been in the news of late. All in the past month, these news stories: Qatar dropped out of OPEC; it will expand activities in Mexico; and, Qatar looks to invest as much as $20 billion in the United States.

How the reader got from there to here is beyond me, but the reader's -- should we say, obsession -- with North Dakota beef led us to this: Qatar imports 97% of its food.

Wiki provides an interesting chart, ranking countries by their "real" population density: population density based on "arable land." Of course, how well countries use their arable land and to what purpose they use their arable land is another question.

Having said that, Qatar has a couple of million people and not much arable land. How much arable land? This is what the reader calculated:

Qatar is now claiming to have around 3 townships of arable land ... and that's for 2 1/2 million people.

If we put Watford City, ND, at the west end of a rectangle, it would run 18 miles east.  So, you'd hit the eastern edge of that rectangle one mile after Johnson's Corner.  The rectangle would only be 6 miles north to south.

Or, Killdeer would be a mile from the eastern edge of a rectangle that ran west to the McKenzie County line - again 6 miles north and south.

Not a lot of farmland, even it were higher quality.  The population number would compare to the combined populations of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. 

They also include grazing land in that same "arable" designation  (thus the tie-in with beef). 

Now back to airlifting cows. First it was was "kows to Kazakhstan." Now it's "quows to Qatar."

From wiki:

In July 2017, following the closure of Qatar's only land border with Saudi Arabia, the country announced plans to airlift 4,000 cows in a bid to meet around one-third of its dairy demand. Local company Baladna will be responsible for the dairy production.

Later, Baladna announced that it will be importing an additional 10,000 cows so that they can meet Qatar's dairy requirements in full by 2018.

Domestic production of meats, dairy products, and crops increased by 400% from June 2017, the onset of Qatar's diplomatic spat, to March 2018, according to the Ministry of Municipality and Environment. Nearly all (98%) the demand for poultry is being met.

The reader's comment regarding dairy farming in Qatar: Their dairy cow import scheme is ludicrous - Dairy is a water-intensive agricultural production.

By the way, that Watford City - Johnson Corner rectangle: the Qatar of North America, I suppose. Didn't The Atlantic publish an article with the title, "Qatar of the Plains," or something to that effect, some time ago.

For the quows and the kows, it was a one-way flight, so no frequent-flyer miles accrued.

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Speaking of Airlifts ...

... it seems Chip, our elf on the shelf, got himself into somewhat of a predicament overnight ----