The evaluation answers four questions. It does not answer the fifth.
Every assessed hectare carries four independent findings. None of them says who develops the land, on what terms, or what happens if nothing is developed at all. That is a separate question, and it is answered by choosing an instrument rather than by measuring the ground.
Can the land support it?
Seventeen land qualities across five groups. Physical capacity of the ground, independent of any crop.
Will the water bear it?
Fifteen parameters. Source, volume, quality, sustainability and basin allocation, read together.
Does the law allow it?
Six checks against six registers held by six separate authorities. Screening one would miss the others.
How well would this crop do?
Twenty-six factors, the same measurements read against each crop's own tolerances.
By what mechanism does it reach an operator?
Not measurable from the ground. Answered by choosing an instrument — and the instrument determines who holds the land, who carries the risk, and what the state can still do afterwards.
The same hectare, four mechanisms
Nothing physical changes between these four rows. The classification is identical. What differs is what the state has left once the land is in use — and that difference is the whole subject of this application.
| Mechanism | Who holds the land | Who carries development risk | What the state can still do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sold outright | The buyer, permanently | The buyer | Nothing on the land side. Any correction has to run through markets, subsidy or regulation |
| Leased for a term | The state throughout | The operator, under committed obligations | Enforce during the term, recover at the end |
| Partnership | The state, with a continuing interest | Shared | Direct the operation from inside it, for as long as the vehicle runs |
| Operated publicly | The state | The state | Everything — and it also pays for everything |
The mechanism is not derivable from the measurements
Two ministries holding the identical evaluation could reach opposite allocation decisions and both be right, because the choice turns on what the Kingdom wants from the land — production at speed, citizen participation, capital drawn in, resource protection — and those aims trade against one another.
No arrangement of soil, water and legal data resolves that trade. This application sets the options out and profiles them. It does not resolve the choice, and it expresses no preference.
What this application evaluates, and what it does not
Each boundary exists because the alternative is a specific, recognisable failure. They are set out here rather than assumed, so that a reader can hold the analysis to them.
1 · Economic impact means food security, not treasury return
This is the boundary most easily lost. An allocation study that drifts into fiscal appraisal starts recommending whichever mechanism returns most money to the state — which is a different question, and one nobody asked.
- Import substitution — what the model displaces from the import bill
- Self-sufficiency contribution on strategic commodities
- Strategic commodity coverage — cereals, forage, dates, vegetables, protein
- Supply-chain resilience against disruption, shipping and foreign price shocks
- Production volume, and how reliable it is year to year
- Time to production
- Capital mobilised, as a measure of development achieved
- Corporate tax receipts
- Lease and licence revenue to the state
- Fiscal return on public investment
- Land sale proceeds
- Job creation counted as tax base
- Any treasury-facing return metric
2 · This application does not re-open the evaluation
The evaluation answers whether agriculture is possible, watered, permitted and suited to a crop. It never answers whether it is profitable. This application answers only how land reaches an operator, and takes the findings as given.
| Question | Answered by | Not answered by |
|---|---|---|
| Is agriculture physically possible here? | Land Evaluation | This application |
| Is there water, and will it last? | Land Evaluation | This application |
| Is development legally permitted? | Land Evaluation | This application |
| How well would a given crop do? | Land Evaluation | This application |
| Where does every value come from, and how far can it be trusted? | Database | This application |
| By what mechanism does land reach an operator? | This application | Land Evaluation · Database |
A permission question must not be answered with an economic argument
If suitability and investment were assessed together, a strong commercial case would begin to soften a physical or legal finding — and a weak one would begin to argue land out of an inventory it belongs in. Separation is what prevents the reverse as well: a legal constraint being cited to close down an economic option it does not actually touch.
The evaluation says what the ground permits. This application says what the state can do about it. Neither overrules the other.
3 · No preferred model
No preference has been expressed by the Ministry, and none is expressed here. Where a model is weak the module says so; where it is strong the module says so. The choice is not resolved.
4 · No existing policy baseline has been supplied
This application does not state what current Saudi land-allocation policy is. Where a Saudi instrument appears in the catalogue it is treated as documented history, cited to its source, with its present status marked as unverified rather than assumed.
Profiled side by side, never scored
Every model is read against the same thirteen criteria in the same order, and shown alongside the others. No criterion is weighted, no pillar is combined, and no total is produced.
Weighting social impact against economic impact is a political judgement
A composite score would require deciding how much citizen participation is worth against how much import substitution. That decision belongs to the Ministry, not to an analysis. Producing a single number would embed a policy choice inside what presents as a technical output — and would conceal precisely the trade-off the comparison exists to reveal.
This follows the rule already applied in the evaluation, where capability, water, land rights and crop suitability are reported as four independent answers and never averaged into one.
Implementation is stated at the point of use
Where a model has been implemented somewhere, the country and programme are named and the source is linked. Where no implementation has been located, the entry says so — the model is carried as an available structure, not presented as a record.
| What the entry shows | What it means |
|---|---|
| A country named | The model has been implemented there, and the outcome described is what was recorded |
| Variant of the group | A real mechanism in use, distinguished from its parent model structurally rather than as a separate programme |
| No known implementation | No programme operating this model has been located. Included for completeness, marked so it is not read as precedent |
Rules carried over from the evaluation
| No invented numbers | Every figure requires a cited source. Where none exists it is marked pending, not estimated. |
| Evidence discipline | Unsubstantiated claims are removed entirely, not softened into vaguer language. |
| State gaps openly | A finding published without its limits invites assumed certainty. |
| Compute, don't assert | Any number shown is derivable, and is checked before it is published. |
| No composite scoring | Wherever the weighting would be a policy judgement rather than a technical one. |
What this application inherits
These gaps sit beneath every economic statement made here. They are listed because economic language reads as more authoritative than the physical findings supporting it, and the qualification has to be visible rather than implied.
| Open item | Effect on this application |
|---|---|
| No Saudi-calibrated crop thresholds | Production estimates are indicative only |
| Area ledger values not computed | No area totals available to size any model |
| Governorate boundary layer not obtained | Zones not yet generated |
| All water and land-rights elements ministry-dependent | Area availability unconfirmed |
| Minimum viable areas unconfirmed against the Terms of Reference | Operator-class routing is provisional |
Options, profiled — not a decision
Five model groups and sixteen sub-models, each set out with how it works, where it has actually been used, what happened when it was, its economic and social impact against thirteen criteria, and the conditions that made it work where it worked.
The Ministry chooses. This application makes the trade-offs visible so that the choice is made with them in view.