Doha: The agricultural produce of Qatar has nearly doubled in past five years, rising from 53,000 tonnes in 2016 to 104,000 tonnes in 2020.
The self-sufficiency of the country in agricultural produce jumped from 19 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2020, surpassing by four percent the target set by Strategic Food Security Projects 2019-23. The strategy run by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) aimed to increase country’s self-sufficiency rate in vegetable produce to 34 percent by 2020 and to 70 percent by 2023.
The figures have been released by the Economics and Statistics Section of Agricultural Affairs Department at the MME.
Local agricultural produce was recorded 55,000 tonnes in 2017, achieving 20 percent self-sufficiency. In 2018 and 2019, the produce reached 74,000 tonnes with 27 percent self-sufficiency and 91,000 tonnes with 33 percent self-sufficiency respectively, the Ministry statistics reveal.
To enhance agricultural produce, the Agricultural Affairs Department is supporting local farms in many ways. Recently, it distributed 72 greenhouses to 24 farms. The initiative aims at supporting local farms to continue vegetable production during summer. The fresh support with greenhouses will encourage the agricultural farms to increase their production, the Ministry has said.
Under other initiatives, the Ministry has provided 6,010 baskets of seeds to 435 farms. A total of 452 farms with cultivated lands in the area of 13,600 dunam also received services of ploughing and levelling from the Ministry.
The Agricultural Affairs Department is also providing guidance to the farmers. During May and June 2021, experts from the Department made 788 visits to the farms to provide necessary agricultural guidance to farmers. A total of 696 visits were also made to inspect the crops and farms during the period of study.
The support to the local farms is part of a multi-million Qatari riyal project by the MME to support farms in increasing the agricultural produce to the sufficient level.
The State Food Security Projects 2019-2023, launched by the MME, target to make Qatar 70 percent self-sufficient in fresh vegetables production by 2023.
To achieve this, the projects focus to increase local agricultural produce in two ways. The first is to boost existing farms by making them fully productive round-the-year with the support of greenhouses, latest agricultural technologies, seeds, fertilisers and marketing platforms.
The second way is to launch new major projects with the support of private sector under which a number of projects have already been launched or are under construction.
At present, there are 953 agricultural farms in Qatar, rising from 832 in 2017. They are producing vegetables in large quantity and supplying to the local market.
