How agriculture improved under the leadership of Sheikh Khalifa.

Under the late Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan's leadership, the UAE government supported the agricultural sector, with an emphasis on boosting the growth of diverse food crops to promote food security.

The UAE is located in an arid zone, and the desert environment accounts for more than three-quarters of its entire area. The country's environment is characterized by limited rainfall, high temperatures, poor soil, and a lack of natural waterways, all of which have a direct impact on the agricultural sector.

Despite the challenges posed by these factors, the UAE has made outstanding efforts over the past decades to build an agricultural sector that is better able to contribute to food diversity and the national economy by adopting policies that limit the impact of these factors and adopting sustainable and climate-smart agriculture methods that focus on the optimal utilization of cultivated land and the quality of local produce to enhance food diversity and the national economy.

These policies are based on cutting-edge technologies and solutions such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and organic agriculture, as well as strengthening agricultural pest control programs, reducing loss and waste throughout the food chain, and increasing interest in agricultural scientific studies and research.

Huge efforts were made to conserve water resources, with a focus on encouraging the adoption and installation of modern irrigation systems to replace flood irrigation, which wastes a lot of water.

National system for sustainable agriculture

In 2020, the UAE Cabinet approved the national system for sustainable agriculture to improve the efficiency of farms, enhance self-sufficiency in food and create new opportunities to ensure that the agriculture sector is always ranked among the best. The national system for sustainable agriculture seeks to increase self-sufficiency from the targeted agricultural crops to 5 percent annually, increase of average farm income to 10 percent annually, raise workforce in the sector by 5 percent annually and achieve a 15 percent annual reduction in water used for irrigation of a production unit.

?Organic farming

In February 2012, the Emirates Authority for Standardisation and Metrology (ESMA) launched an organic food certification scheme, complete with a logo that allows customers to clearly distinguish organic products from conventional ones. Approximately half of the 40 existing organic farms have already been certified, with others in the process.

?Award for date palm and agricultural innovation

Sheikh Khalifa identified the development of a date production industry as one of the country's top goals. Continuous efforts have been made to boost agricultural output and make better use of all available resources, including the introduction of the Khalifa International Awards for Date Palm and Agricultural Innovation.

?Sheikh Khalifa established the Khalifa International Award for Date Palm and Agricultural Innovation to honor innovators and workers in the agricultural and date palm sectors in the UAE and around the world and to recognize outstanding innovations and efforts aimed at the sector's long-term development for present and future generations.

?The prize aims to promote the UAE as a world leader in the cultivation of the precious tree and the advancement of date palm research, as well as to encourage researchers, producers, exporters, and other interested parties to pay more attention to the very nutritious fruit.

Promoting palm tree agriculture has resulted in doubling the amount of land dedicated to date palm farming while also encouraging the production of date-related food goods.