A US lawmaker from the state of Arizona has introduced legislation in Congress that would impose a 300 percent tax on the sale of water-intensive crops grown by foreign companies in the state, in a bid to curb the extensive use of water in the drought-stricken state.
Agree completely, but hear me out. It’s politically difficult to ask ranchers and farmers to do anything. Like historically, a lot of our domestic policy centers around keeping them happy - the idea being that they are providing such a vital service that we don’t want to mess with them much.
That’s why Bundy thought he was going to get away with free grazing forever, and why huge swathes of homestead were granted a few hundred years ago - gotta get people turning dirt into food/money.
So even if this is primarily anti-foreign, it still provides a sorely needed example of legislation that could pass, and then the practice in bureaucracy needed to enforce it. It can be expanded. Let them pass this, and then lobby and advocate for adding groups to it in future legislative sessions.
It’s not a bill against farmers. In this case, farmland is leased to a Saudi company called Fondomonte, which uses the state’s groundwater to grow alfalfa, which is then exported to feed cows in the country.