Kingdom of Saudi Arabia · Ministry of Environment, Water & Agriculture · National Study
National Agricultural Land Evaluation
A national assessment of where agriculture is physically possible, adequately watered, legally permitted, and suited to a named crop. The Kingdom is screened, then evaluated hectare by hectare, then grouped into developable zones.
Assessed
64 elements · 19 groups
Unit
1 hectare
Method
Nation → Hectare → Zone
Basis
Satellite & desk-based
Framework
FAO land evaluation
01 · The Method
Four questions, four separate answers
Every hectare is asked four independent questions. Each is answered by its own module, in its own notation — never combined into a single score.
1
Can the land support it?
CAPABILITY
The physical ground — soil, terrain, climate, drainage. Assessed once, independent of the crop.
C1C2C3C4CN
2
Will the water bear it?
WATER
Source, volume, quality, sustainability, basin allocation. Assessed separately — never folded into the land.
W1W2W3W4W0
3
Does the law allow it?
LAND RIGHTS & CONSTRAINTS
Protection, ownership, zoning, competing use. Six checks against six separate registers.
E1E2E3E0
4
How well would this crop do?
SUITABILITY
The same measurements read again — against one named crop's tolerances, not a general threshold.
S1S2S3N1N2
Three gates must all open. A hectare must be capable, watered and permitted before suitability is worth asking. Any one failing stops the hectare — and the assessment records which one, because a military exclusion cannot be moved while an unrecorded title can.
One hectare carries one code — four answers, four notations
C2s·W1·E1·S2zcapable · watered · clear · moderately suitable for the crop
02 · Depth of Analysis
What is evaluated, and how much
Sixty-four determinations on every hectare that reaches assessment, from nineteen analytical groups across four independent evaluations.
Capability17 · 5 groups
Soil Physical 4 · Soil Chemical 4 · Water & Drainage 3 · Topography & Erosion 4 · Climate 2
64 elements ×[ assessment area, pending ] hectares =the national computation
…and the 26 suitability factors are re-read against each candidate crop's own thresholds, so the crop layer multiplies again by the number of crops assessed.
03 · Reading a Result
One hectare, four answers
Each answer names not only its class but the reason — a subclass letter identifies which family of limitation governed, so a finding can be acted on, not merely recorded.
C2s · W1 · E1 · S2z
C2sCapable, moderate limitation. Class 2 of five; subclass s names a soil-physical quality as the cause.
W1Water usable without constraint. Source, volume, quality and allocation all pass — no subclass needed.
E1Legally clear. All six checks pass. Rarer than it looks — unrecorded tenure alone puts most non-urban land at E2.
S2zModerately suitable for the crop. Subclass z names salinity as the governing limit for this crop specifically.
The four series are never mixed. Each answers a different question — only Suitability uses S1–N2, only Capability uses C1–CN.
The grid — assessed cells, coloured by capability class
Ten assessed cells among unassessed neighbours. Colour is the capability class; the label is the cell identifier. A real viewport at this zoom holds several thousand cells.
04 · Where the Study Starts, and Where it Lands
Nation → Hectare → Zone
The study begins at national scale and ends at the scale a decision is actually made. The Kingdom is screened to remove land that is definitionally unavailable; what survives is assessed one hectare at a time; adjacent hectares carrying the same answers are grouped into zones.
1
Step 1 · Nation
Screen the Kingdom
Remove land already allocated, land that is not land, terrain physically impossible, and ground legally barred. Not a judgement — a filter.
→ output: the assessment area
2
Step 2 · Hectare
Assess every hectare
Each 1-ha cell is evaluated against all 64 elements and emerges carrying four independent results — capability, water, legal, and per-crop suitability.
→ output: C2s · W1 · E1 · S2z
3
Step 3 · Zone
Group into zones
Adjacent hectares sharing the same capability, water and legal answer merge into one block — large enough and uniform enough to develop under a single plan.
→ output: the zone map & area ledger
Why zones, not hectares
No decision is made about a single hectare. A zone is a contiguous block sharing the same capability, water and legal answer — uniform enough for one plan, large enough to be worth developing.
Zones are crop-agnostic by design. Boundaries come from capability, water and legal state only; crop suitability attaches as an attribute, not a boundary. So the Kingdom has one stable zone map — adding a crop adds a column, not a new geometry.
05 · Before Anything is Assessed
What is screened out first
The first pass removes only land that is definitionally unavailable — not land that scores poorly. A steep slope stays in (a capability question); only ground that cannot be agricultural under any assessment comes out.
—Allocated — urban, roads, industrial & MODON zones · permanent
—Not land — water bodies, wetland, active sabkha · permanent
—Impossible — cliff, rock outcrop, active dunes · permanent
—Legally barred — protected areas, military, petroleum & mining · held by authority
What was removed matters as much as what remains. Three families are permanent — a city, a cliff, a lake. The fourth is held by another authority — a petroleum block expires, a concession lapses. On a ten-year horizon that is a materially different proposition, and the assessment records it separately.
1 best234N / not suitable0 not assessed
215M ha screened · 1 ha unit of assessment · Ministry of Environment, Water & Agriculture
Tec Solution
Prepared for the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture