Our spring membership drive ends June 12. Donate now!

THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• Water is scarce in the American West, but that hasn’t stopped a Saudi-owned hay farm from using massive amounts of water in the middle of the Arizona desert.
• We’ve been taught that “40 acres and a mule” was a broken promise. But it was real – and an even bigger betrayal to formerly enslaved people than most of us realized.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

The Great Arizona Water Grab

For years, a Saudi-owned hay farm has been using massive amounts of water in the middle of the Arizona desert and exporting the hay back to Saudi Arabia. 

Reveal’s Nate Halverson and Ike Sriskandarajah first broke this story more than eight years ago. Since then, the water crisis in the American West has only worsened.

Megafarms have taken hold, and it’s not just foreign companies fueling the problem: Halverson uncovers that even as local and state politicians have fought to stop these deals, they’ve been unknowingly benefiting. 

On this week’s Reveal, updated since we first aired this story last summer, learn about water use in the West, who’s profiting and who’s getting left behind. 

For more of Halverson’s reporting into a global scramble for food and water, watch “The Grab,” in theaters and streaming starting June 14.

 

COMING SOON

40 Acres and a Lie

It’s often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But “40 acres and a mule” was more than that. 

It was real. 

In 40 Acres and a Lie, a three-part podcast series from Reveal and the Center for Public Integrity, we tell the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back. We explore a reparation that wasn’t – and the wealth gap that remains.

The first episode is coming next Saturday. Listen to the trailer.

Subscribe to Reveal wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

In Case You Missed It