AgTech in Arabia: 'spectacular forgetting' and the technopolitics of greening the desert

Abstract

'AgTech' is the latest discourse about introducing new technologies to agricultural production. Researchers, corporations, and governments around the world are investing heavily in supporting its development. Abu Dhabi, the largest and wealthiest emirate in the UAE, has been among these supporters, recently announcing a massive scheme to support AgTech companies. Given the extreme temperatures and aridity of the Arabian Peninsula, several new start-ups have focused on 'controlled environment' facilities – hydroponics and aeroponics in various kinds of greenhouses. Despite the narrative of novelty touted by these companies, this is not the UAE's first foray with bringing ultra-modern or 'scientific' greenhouses to the Arabian Peninsula – a large University of Arizona project did so in Abu Dhabi from 1969-1974. Yet that project is largely forgotten today, including among today's new AgTech entrepreneurs. This article investigates why this is the case and, more generally, why the systematic failures of high-modernist, spectacular projects like those to green the desert are so routinely forgotten. In analyzing the story linking AgTech in Arabia 50 years ago and today, I show how 'spectacular forgetting' is related to the technopolitics of spectacle, but also rooted in geopolitical discourses and spatial imaginaries particular to each historical moment.Keywords: spectacle; desert greening; AgTech; agriculture; Arabian Peninsula; United Arab Emirates

Creating a hydrosocial territory: water and agriculture in the Liwa Oasis

“…This new direction dos not challenge vested interests or the pre-existing socio-economic order; it is politically safe. Also, it fits with the dominant narratives of agricultural modernization and market-oriented development that the state has mobilized since its inception (Koch 2019).…”

“…This theme has become far more important following the outbreak of the Arab Spring (Interviews C), and it dovetails very neatly with food security narratives, which became increasingly prominent after the food price shocks in the 2008-2013 period (Woertz 2013). Promoting economically productive and sustainable farming methods -as defined by the state-deployed discourses of irrigation efficiency and crop water productivity -are important legitimizing narratives, but ultimately secondary objectives (Koch 2019).…”

“…The market orientation relates to fresh vegetable production described above, and the narrative aspect reflects the role of modernization as a core component in the Abu Dhabi government's legitimacy. Indeed, as Koch (2019) shows, cyclical interest in hightech agricultural modernism is a recurrent feature in Emirati national narratives and political technologies. Despite these narrative shifts and recent, highly publicized, investment in high-tech farms, state expenditure on agriculture is clearly dominated by subsidies that perpetuate the extant hydrosocial cycle and the agricultural production systems it supports.…”

The desert as laboratory: Science, state‐making, and empire in the drylands

“…A long line of (almost exclusively) mensome of whose stories we will encounter belowhave cultivated this expertise to advance their careers, as well as their personal and political interests. Positioning themselves as arid lands scholars, these individuals were instrumental to establishing state power in Arizona from the late 1800s on, and which they then went on to apply in building a US empire in the Middle East (Jones, 2010, 2021, Koch, 20192021;Tesdell, 2015;Vitalis, 2007). Long before America's "desert kingdom" was imagined to be in the sands of Arabia, researchers, politicians, and entrepreneurs (sometimes one and the same) were busy building their own empire on the Western frontier, united around a common project of bringing the desert under cultivation.…”

“…A different kind of techno‐scientific intervention seen across history rather seeks to transform the desert into a blossoming paradise. Wreaking a different sort of havoc on natural systems, schemes to green the desert also represent a form of violence – albeit in ways that their proponents more easily deflect through harnessing the spectacle of transforming the ostensibly “barren” into something “productive” (Koch, 2015, 2019; Molle & Floch, 2008; Trottier et al, 2020). Indeed, as many scholars have shown, western expansion of the USA was underpinned by efforts to both map the territory and to “conquer” it by bringing it under cultivation (Akhter & Ormerod, 2015; Blackhawk, 2006; Burtner, 2012; Conrad, 2014; Curley, 2019; Evans, 2017; Frymer, 2017; Isenberg & Kessler, 2017; Isenberg et al, 2019; Knobloch, 1996; Meeks, 2007; Morrissey & Burtner, 2019; Sayre, 2017; Smith, 1950; Teisch, 2011; VanderMeer, 2010; Worster, 1985).…”