How Does The Richest Nation Solve A Milk Shortage? By Airlifting 4,000 Cows

How do you start a dairy industry overnight in a wealthy desert nation with its transport links closed? You buy 4,000 cows from Australia and the U.S. and put them on airplanes. That is what Qatari businessman Moutaz Al Khayyat told Bloomberg he is doing. The airlift will require as many as 60 flights on Qatar Airways, but Al Khayyat said, "This is the time to work for Qatar."Last week, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates all cut ties to Qatar. While it's very wealthy because of its oil and gas reserves, Qatar imports 80 percent of its food from bigger neighbors, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia.Or rather, it did until last week. Qatar is a peninsula in the Persian Gulf, and it shares its only land border with Saudi Arabia — a border that is now closed.The news sent people rushing to grocery stores, with reports of long lines and empty shelves.After they land, the cows will make a home in the Wisconsin of Qatar "on a site covering the equivalent of almost 70 soccer fields, (where) new grey sheds line two strips of verdant grass in the desert with a road running through the middle up to a small mosque," according to Bloomberg.Al Khayyat, chairman of a company called Power International Holding, told Bloomberg that he had already been planning on importing the cows by boat. But when Qatar was cut off by Saudi Arabia and four other countries, he picked up the pace. He expects milk production to begin by the end of June and to meet a third of Qatar's milk demand by mid-July. He told the publication that shipping the cows by air raised the transport cost five times over, to $8 million.Qatar's "National Vision 2030" aims to create "a diversified economy that gradually reduces its dependence on hydrocarbon industries." Becoming less reliant on foreign foodstuffs is a key part of that effort.