UAE's ambitious food security projects

 

A surge in food prices globally and the disruption to supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic have caused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to accelerate schemes to grow more crops and farm more livestock.

When the (UAE) went into lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, residents had the same reaction as millions of others around the world — they started panic-buying.

But in the face of the pandemic, the UAE’s confidence that it will continue to have enough food is bolstered by its success in growing its own, using innovations like vertical farming and climate-resilient crops.

The country, currently imports about 90% of its needs, said it should be able to triple the proportion of its food that’s local within a decade.

The government has stepped up plans in the past year for everything from growing rice in the desert to importing dairy cows and researching how to make food in space and other extreme climates.

“Realistically, we’re looking at maybe increasing our domestic production going toward 30%-40% in the next 10 years,” Mariam Almheiri, the minister of state for food and water security, said

That will entail plenty of investment given that the UAE’s population now about 10 million, is expected to rise over that period, she said.

Under the UAE’s National Food Security Strategy, which was officially launched in 2018 but had already been woven into government policy for several years before, the country has worked to boost domestic food production.

It has built infrastructure, including complexes for cattle-breeding — and introduced financial measures, from exempting value-added tax on food produced on local farms to paying subsidies on fodder.

In the UAE, agriculture accounts for the majority of water use, followed by domestic use. The agricultural water demand in the UAE stood at 1,400 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2000, and is due to reach 2,050 bcm in 2025. 

To meet the country’s freshwater needs, the government is increasingly turning to energy-intensive desalination methods.