Activists’ aerial attack
Farmers are bracing for a major animal rights campaign against their winter grazing practices.
This tiny Middle East oil powerhouse faces an economic blockade by its neighbours. Until June last year, Qatar imported milk from Almarai, a Saudi conglomerate. Then Saudi Arabia and three other Arab states closed their borders to punish Qatar for supporting Islamist groups and Al Jazeera, a state-owned broadcaster that criticises all the Gulf monarchies except Qatar’s. Overnight the world’s richest country (measured by income per head at purchasing-power parity) was cut off from its food supplies. It first turned to Turkey and Iran. Shoppers got a crash course in Turkish: placards in the dairy aisle of supermarkets explained that ‘süt’ meant milk. Now a 14,000-cow farm in a desert is supplying milk and dairy products to the Qataris. The tiny kingdom will soon be self-sufficient in dairy products.
