The Ministry of Municipality continues reform of the agriculture sector by making available new tools and techniques to farmers for reducing their production costs and enabling them to compete with imported produce. It seeks to help local farms adopt more water-efficient farming system to address the problem of water shortages.
One of the initiatives of the ministry is to provide green-houses to local farms to boost agricultural production. The ministry has already installed greenhouses in an area of 666 hectares of arable land. There is a plan to provide about 3,478 greenhouses to local farms and about 58 percent of the work to install greenhouses has been completed.
The greenhouses allow farmers to grow different kinds of crops in climates that may not be hospitable. The development of greenhouse farming techniques has resulted in more overall food for the whole world. The greenhouses are being provided to farmers free of charge based on their classifications. The Agricultural Affairs Department at the ministry will allocate greenhouses to every productive farm.
The farms have been classified as A, B and C according to the efficiency and production capacity. The greenhouses help extend the agricultural season. Farms stop production during summer in Qatar, but those who have greenhouses can produce vegetables even in summer.
Other initiatives of the municipality include improving the quality and quantity of agricultural produce, providing marketing platforms and reducing the consumption of groundwater in producing green fodder. The country made remarkable progress in lifting its self-sufficiency rate in some fresh food production, including vegetables, livestock and fish in 2022.
Besides, the ministry has launched several projects under Qatar National Food Security Strategy 2018-2023 to increase production of vegetables and table eggs to 70 percent, fish to 90 percent, shrimp to 100 percent, and red meat to 30 percent of total domestic demand by 2023. According to the Food Security Department at ministry, the self-sufficiency rate in the production of local vegetables increased from about 20 percent in 2017 to reach about 46 percent in 2022, an increase of about 130 percent.
The percentage of self-sufficiency in milk and its products increased from only 28 percent in 2017 to 100 percent, which means that the sufficiency rate quadrupled over the last five years.
Qatar despite not being geographically located in a fertile land and with an abundance of rainfall, the country continues to take giant strides in ensuring food security through strategic planning, scientific innovations and wise investments over the years.
