Category: Baladna: National Insecurity and the Politics of Petro-Agriculture

This child’s vlog recounting a trip to Baladna’s farm, park, and publicly viewable premises foregrounds the aesthetics the company adopts to appeal to the public. Life-size cow sculptures are spaced throughout the intensively-watered, green entrance. A train with compartments in the shape of cows with hollowed backs provides transportation and entertainment for children. Once inside, a museum-like aesthetic attempts to portray the company’s modern or postmodern project as historically grounded, even natural (as my previous post argued). Through an analysis of the aesthetic adopted by Baladna’s farm—as much as I could see through the lens of the child’s vlog—I will maintain that one issue with the company’s aesthetic lies in its appropriation of scale. Baladna invokes the family cow, the self-sufficient family farm, while operating at a national level of production and distribution with tens of thousands of cows and their attendant human and non-human infrastructures. I will connect this argument to the discourse of self-sufficiency that I see at play in this aesthetic, as it frames in individual scalar terms what effectively functions on the scale of the nation.

In “Derangements of Scale,” Timothy Clark posits that climate change forces us to confront the ways in which scale disrupts our common-sense ways of approaching the world. What might “have seemed justified, internally coherent, self-evident or progressive now [needs] to be reassessed in terms of hidden exclusions, disguised costs or as offering a merely imaginary or temporary closure” (Clark 8-9). Clark critiques the “individualist rhetoric” (9) inherent to the Hobbesian-Lockean liberal tradition that is concerned with the creation and defense of private property at the expense of natural resources (6). Similar rhetoric surfaces frequently in Baladna’s publications (see the end of the “Baladna Phase 1 and 2” video); the company’s appeals to the notion of self-sufficiency attempt to conjure up the ecologically “natural” development of subsistence agriculture and the family farm. This, as Clark might put it, is “deranged” by scalar effects that render it incongruous, non-progressive, and so on. While at the individual level, self-sufficiency is “justified,” at scale we need to consider the significant carbon emissions and ecological impacts of agriculture, which account for “one-fourth of total anthropogenic [greenhouse gas emissions]” (Roy and Sahoo). Both Baladna’s use of the discourse of self-sufficiency and its ensuing aesthetic are complicated by scalar issues, and we need to recognize this to begin to understand Baladna’s relationship to the environment.

In aesthetic terms, Baladna’s farm could not appeal more clearly to notions of self-sufficiency. Take, for instance, the display of antique, metal farming implements with a backdrop of simple stone, and a stack of firewood. These images allude to subsistence farming, to the lifestyles of “mountain men” and other settlers in the American West, among other things. In the vlog’s voice-over, Aimen (referring to the display of antique tools) says “these are some of the tools they use for farming” (3:33). Clearly, this juxtaposition is meant to associate the two farming practices and scales (individual and corporate), as evidenced by the child’s misapprehension or at least mischaracterization of the tools’ current (non-)use.

In addition, as a visitor looks at this display, a glass overlook to their left opens on an ultra-modern milking parlor that can process 100 cows every 10 minutes (3:42). The milking parlor, rather than utilizing “Old West” points of reference, is metallic, symmetrical, and industrial. In these two aesthetics there is not only a tension between the old and new, but also between the individual and the collective, the effects of which are unclear and rendered less visible by the (intentional) overlapping of the two in the company’s aesthetic presentation. The realm of nation (or at least corporation) appropriates and is “legitimated” by the historical and cultural connotations of the aesthetic of the family cow—the frugally self-sufficient—while continuing to operate on a drastically different scale, obscuring the company’s real impacts by misdirecting from the scale at which we should be looking for them.

Works Cited

Clark, “Derangements of Scale,” Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept, London, Bloomsbury, 2015.

Aimen, “Baladna Farm | Baladna Food Industries | Baladna Park, Alkhor, Qatar | First Dairy Farm of Qatar,” YouTube, uploaded by Q Familia, 9 February 2020, https://youtu.be/P_XDfGWCVck

“Baladna Phase 1 and 2,” YouTube, uploaded by Baladna Food Industries, 25 January 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnJFHvXrUaQ.

Roy, DK and Sahoo, Subhra. “Agrarian Carbon Footprint: A Global Issue,” EC Agriculture (2020): 14-20. March 24, 2020. https://www.ecronicon.com/eco20/pdf/ECAG-03-ECO-0005.pdf. Accessed November 20, 2020.

In “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon critiques the idea of “wilderness,” arguing that it obfuscates the interconnectedness of nature and culture. “Wilderness” stages certain places as “empty”—devoid of civilization, culture, and other human imprints (Cronon 9). In his analysis, “wilderness” has, among other things, enabled colonialist projects, presenting land occupied by indiginous peoples as unmanaged and untouched by “culture,” thus enabling colonization to be framed as “exploration” and “civilization” (Cronon 9-10). Furthermore, by focusing our attention on the preservation of sacredly-inflected “sublime” landscapes and ecosystems associated with “wilderness,” the ecological well-being of “mundane” urban and suburban areas are deemed relatively less important (Cronon 16). While “wilderness” as understood by Cronon is a particularly American idea (rooted in European post-Enlightenment thought), his critique of discourses that represent land as empty is still useful. In the context of Baladna, I will contend that “desert” or adjacent ideas of land in a Qatari context function similarly to “wilderness.” Through an analysis of Baladna’s “Made by Nature” slogan, I will argue that it presents “desert” as even more radically empty than “wilderness”by instead framing drastic human ecological interventions and development as “natural.”

It may be the case that “desert” is more easily frameable as empty, given that this biome lacks conspicuous benefits to human life, such as vast quantities of fresh water, forests, wildlife, and the like that characterize the “sublime” landscapes in Cronon’s view. However, deserts are in fact home to various life-forms. The landscape in northern Qatar where Baladna is located sustains “desert plants [that] blossom briefly during the spring rains” (Anthony and Crystal). So, deserts are not devoid of life or empty; they are unique ecosystems that, admittedly, present challenges for human cohabitation.

A project like Baladna involves raising livestock in a landscape in which they would not otherwise survive, with the help of cooling systems (in turn supported by desalination plants) and imported feed (Mufson). Deserts, without human intervention, do not consist of the kind of ecosystems that can support large herds of livestock. The development of Baladna is effectively framed as the “naturification” of land that is not “uncivilized” (like “wilderness”) but “unnatural.” This is exemplified in the slogan—“Made in Nature”—found on Baladna products (“Products”). The “nature” to which the slogan refers would not be productive in the same way, would not support the tens of thousands of dairy cows, were it not for significant human actions taken to create “artificial,” hospitable conditions. I use quotes here to draw attention to the ways in which humans are deeply imbricated in nature, and vice versa, and our conceptions of ourselves as separate from nature can be themselves seen as problematic, as Cronon recognizes (11). Nevertheless, the common understanding of “nature” as something existing without human intervention (to the extent that this is still meaningful) is useful, because the slogan is likely built on or at least interpreted by many people in terms of such an understanding. In sum, the slogan configures human developmental maneuvers, or at least the products created by such maneuvers, as “natural,” which can be read as implying that the un-commodified (or differently commodified) land as it existed before, with its distinct ecosystems and lifeforms, is not merely “empty” but less-than-natural, dead, even alien. If the “artificial” ecosystems now present on the land due to the development of Baladna are “natural,” then what is the status of what was there before? It is only by characterizing “desert” as less-than-“natural” that Baladna’s “artificial” developments, the human-made modifications to the land and climate, can be rendered “natural.” The land becomes “natural” as it is greenified, artificially cooled, and so on. It is a place “in full transformation” brought on by “corners of greenery … which have emerged from the landscape for a year [in the form of greenhouses that] shelter fruits and vegetables, cultures a priori not very compatible with the climate of the Arabian peninsula” (Van Ruymbeke). Thus, the slogan and other company materials contain a conception of “desert” as even emptier than “wilderness.” Desert in this formulation is seen not only as empty of culture or humans, but of “nature” itself.

Works Cited

Anthony, John D. and Crystal, Jill A. “Qatar,” Encyclopedia Britannica, November 07, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/place/Qatar. Accessed November 14, 2020.

Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,”

Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature​, edited by William Cronon, W.W. Norton & Co., 1995, pp. 69-90.

Mufson, Steven. “How Qatar’s Cows Show the Growing Resistance to a Saudi Led Boycott,” The Washington Post Online, July 21, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/how-qatars-cows-show-the-growing-resistance-to-a-saudi-led-boycott/2019/07/19/78880256-a4b2-11e9-a767-d7ab84aef3e9_story.html. Accessed November 12, 2020.

“Products,” Baladna, n.d. https://baladna.com/products/. Accessed November 14, 2020.

Van Ruymbeke, Laure. “Qatar: Baladna, la ferme aux 20 000 vaches,” Le Point International,

June 5, 2020, https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/qatar-baladna-la-ferme-aux-20-000-vaches -05-06-2018-2224351_24.php. Accessed November 13, 2020. (Translation found excerpted at https://baladna.com/qatar-baladna-the-farm-with-20000-cows/. Accessed November 13, 2020).

On a “fact sheet” presented to investors on their website, Baladna outlines its mission to “ensure healthy, natural food resources to contribute to the self-sufficiency of the State of Qatar” (“Fact Sheet”). But some important facts are elided or obscured by this presentation. The discourse of self-sufficiency, that this statement can be seen as playing into, glosses over the environmental impacts of its production. Transporting the livestock and creating the conditions for their survival has not been an easy task, and certainly has contributed substantially to Qatar’s carbon footprint. Shortly after the blockade, an Australian ship brought in thousands of sheep, and around 4,000 cows were brought in by plane (AlArabiya). According to the OECD, about 17% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by agriculture. One can assume that the emissions produced by cooling systems (Washington Post), massive desalination plants (Rahman and Zaidi), and other infrastructural projects that support Baladna’s operations are not trivial. And ultimately, most of these projects are only possible because of the country’s reliance on fossil fuels; Qatar was the world’s leading exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG) in 2019 (Sönnichsen).

In “Fossil Freedoms: The Politics of Emancipation and the End of Oil,” Hannes Bergthaller argues that modern understandings of freedom, indeed our understandings of modernity itself, are built on fossil fuels. He argues that in order for us to transition away from petromodernity (the kind of modernity enabled by fossil fuels), as we must to survive, we should interrogate and rearticulate our notions of what freedom means. The self-sufficiency discourse surrounding Baladna ignores the fact that Qatar is put at risk by its activities that contribute to climate change. The way such a discourse understands freedom is what is of interest to me in this post. By presenting self-sufficiency as “freedom”–rather than a more comprehensive freedom articulated alongside an awareness of environmental consequences–this discourse is paradoxical. It perpetuates a notion of “freedom” that eventually undoes itself, as environmental catastrophes destroy the “freedoms” it enables. As such, it is emblematic of petromodernity; it’s an understanding of freedom that, according to Bergthaller, needs to be deconstructed and reformulated in order to transition away from our suicidal dependence on fossil fuels.

However, this case study also raises a number of questions about Bergthaller’s argument. For one, the deconstruction that he argues will help us change our idea of freedom, and thus move away from fossil fuels, is itself largely enabled by fossil fuels. Given the material conditions that enable these practices (deconstruction), there is an ideological tension between the argument that it is important and should continue and the argument that we must extricate ourselves and our ideas from fossil fuels. As a student at Georgetown Qatar, my education is financed in large part by fossil fuels. Arguably, I would not be writing this without Qatar’s LNG production. If deconstruction as an academic practice is so dependent on the socio-economic base of fossil fuels (at least to continue at the same scale), how can it lead us meaningfully past them? While I agree with Bergthaller that deconstruction can help change how we view freedom, I don’t think this gives enough importance to the material conditions that constrain and give rise to our practices (and thus our ideas). Moving past fossil fuels might also require admitting that, after a certain point of usefulness, deconstruction and academia as currently understood might also be unsustainable.

Works Cited

AlArabiya, “Cow Farm in Qatari Desert Struggles Amid Boycott,” https://english.alarabiya.net

/en/business/economy/2017/06/18/Cow-farm-in-Qatari-desert-struggles-amid-Arab-boycott. Accessed November 2, 2020.

Bergthaller, Hannes. “Fossil Freedoms: The Politics of Emancipation and the End of Oil.” The

Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, 1st edition, edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, Michelle Niemann, Routledge, 2017, pp. 424-432.

“Fact Sheet.” Baladna, https://baladna.com/investor_relations/fact-sheet/. Accessed November 2,

2020.

Mufson, Steven. “How Qatar’s Cows Show the Growing Resistance to a Saudi Led Boycott,”

The Washington Post Online, July 21, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ middle _east/how-qatars-cows-show-the-growing-resistance-to-a-saudi-led-boycott /2019/07/19/78880256-a4b2-11e9-a767-d7ab84aef3e9_story.html. Accessed November 6, 2020.

OECD. (2016) “Agriculture and Climate Change: Towards Sustainable, Productive and

Climate-Friendly Agricultural Systems.” https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/ministerial/

background /notes/4_background_note.pdf. Accessed November 2, 2020.

Sönnichsen, N. (2019) “Liquefied natural gas: major exporting countries.” July 1, 2020.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274528/major-exporting-countries-of-lng/. Accessed November 4, 2020.

Zaidi, Javaid & Siddiqui, Hammadur. (2018). “Desalination in Qatar: Present Status and Future

Prospects. Civil Engineering Research Journal, 6. 10.19080/CERJ.2018.06.555700.

Baladna, which translates to “our country,” is perhaps a fitting name for a company that symbolizes Qatari self-sufficiency in the wake of the 2017 diplomatic crisis. Baladna has filled much of Qatar’s demand for dairy products after the interruption of the country’s former supply chains, which forced the state to either find alternative suppliers and trade partners or to self-produce. According to its website, Baladna supports “health food security … [and] implements a long term strategy, in collaboration with the Local Authorities, to provide the local market with healthy dairy product [sic]” (“Home,” Baladna). However, a complete understanding of national security and food security must take into account the threats of climate change and the costs, both immediate and long-term, of not moving away from a fossil fuel-based economy. The company’s statements are symptomatic of a discourse that privileges national security over environmental security. My aim in these posts is thus to draw out the paradox that exists between short-term national security and environmental security (often mistakenly conceived of as merely a long-term issue), the former of which is self-defeating if it ignores issues of water scarcity and rising atmospheric and oceanic temperatures. 

For Qatar in particular, climate change poses important threats. The country is already hotter than the IPCC would like to keep the rest of the planet, facing 5-year mean temperatures that are 2 degrees celsius higher than the country was in the 1800s, prior to industrialization (Mufson). Qatar is thus one of the places most implicated in the temperature changes wrought by climate change, and will continue to be so as it is “one of the fastest warming areas of the world, at least outside the arctic” (Mufson, quoting Zeke Hausfather). In this way, it is clear that environmental security is an issue of national security, to a greater degree for Qatar than for other countries. The question for us is then how a company and symbol of national self-reliance like Baladna can be understood in this context. 

In addition, to connect this to the environmental humanities, WwWhat discourses can be seen to lend credence to this hierarchy of “securities”? Ideas, often contradictory ones, are at work in the reproduction of a society so dependent on substances that put it at grave risk. Of interest to our considerations will be government statements, company materials provided to investors, and other materials adjacent to the company and the 2017 blockade. Hopefully, this will give us a better understanding of how a state so dependent on natural gas production conceives of itself and its relation to human security in the context of climate change, as well as which discourses are called into question to the greatest extent by this crisis. What historical and intellectual circumstances lead a country to raise cows in the desert, and what can this tell us about that country’s relationship to its own security, futurity, and environmental sustainability?

Works Cited

Mufson, Steven. “2°C Beyond the Limit: Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors.” The Washington Post Online, October 16, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/. Accessed September 23, 2020. 

“Home.” Baladna/بلدنا . www.baladna.com. Accessed September 23, 2020.