Qatar has made significant progress in its efforts to diversify the economy in the past five years, along with successful great strides it has made in achieving food security and self-sufficiency in food production.
Over the past few years, Qatar has boosted its agriculture, poultry and livestock production. This year, the country adopted the national food security strategy for 2019-2023 which is mainly based on increasing local production using the minimum amount of water, electricity and sophisticated technology to make the local products available at competitive prices.
The strategy entails strategic storage, international trade and logistics services to ensure diversification of food supply sources. The importance of these efforts and strategy stems from the vitality of food security under global trend towards economic nationalism and protectionist policies in global trade which affect countries importing food.
Managing of market and promotion of local products is one of the components of the strategy. Where the authorities concerned provide with a platform like winter markets for local farms to directly market their agricultural products as well as introduce people to the varieties of fruits and vegetables grown in Qatar. These platforms include seasonal markets such as winter vegetable market, Mahaseel Festival which is gearing up for the launch of the fourth edition in the Cultural Village Foundation – Katara from December 23 to 28.
The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has established the Food Security Department to work as an umbrella organisation under which all food security programs will be implemented in collaboration with other concerned departments.
During a panel discussion on food security at the Kuala Lumpur Summit 2019, Minister of Commerce and Industry H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari affirmed Qatar has been able to achieve high levels of self-sufficiency in various agricultural products and to establish a strategic stockpile thereof, as the rate of self-sufficiency of dairy products has increased during the past two years from 27 per cent to 106 per cent, while the in fresh poultry it increased from 49 per cent to 123 per cent.
The Minister said that Qatar’s investments in the food industries sector have increased 126 per cent to QR5.2bn in 2019 compared to QR2.3bn in 2016. The country not only has adopted a strategy to ensure self-sufficiency and food security but has moved further to locally produce food to export them to regional and international markets.
The successful experience of Baladna in ensuring local needs of dairy products by 100 per cent and its plan to exports its products was highlighted by H E Al Kuwari during the Summit held between December,18-21.
The HE Minister of Commerce and Industry also noted that food security represents a top priority for Qatar on the developmental level and is one of the main pillars of the country’s security and economic independence.
