Qatar boosts food security

Economic uncertainties in the Middle East have accelerated a strategic pivot by Qatar towards self-sufficiency – based on plans that had been underway since 2008

For a small nation to have achieved almost 100% supply security of essential food items, with over 40% self-sufficiency in basic vegetables, represents impressive progress towards self-reliance. For Qatar, which is almost a complete desert, it is remarkable. Its climate is one of the harshest from the point of view of cultivating food: rain is rare and unpredictable; temperatures in the long summer can reach 50 degrees.

Economic disruption since the global financial crisis of 2008 has enhanced the importance of food security, and much of the progress has been in the past five years. Until around 2016-17, around 80-90% of Qatar’s food was imported, and some 40% of this was via land routes from Saudi Arabia.

The nation was potentially vulnerable but Qatar has progressively accelerated its diversification of supplies, and onshoring of food production, defying any assumption that domestic cultivation was impossible at scale. By October 2021, the director of the Food Security Department at the Ministry of Municipality, Dr Masoud Jarallah Al Marri, was able to report that the rate of self-sufficiency in five essential vegetables foodstuffs had reached 46%, was 100% for fresh poultry, 70% for dates and 75% for fish. The country is now ranked as the 24th best in the world for food security.

The issue had become a strategic priority for the Qatari government since the 2000s, influenced in part by the global financial crisis of 2008. Qatar has a sovereign wealth fund of $475 billion for a population of around 320,000-350,000, so has had the resources for an ambitious strategic plan. There are four strands to the strategy, set out in a formal policy for the period 2018-2023: diversifying trade routes; efficient transport with low waste; building storage, and efficient local cultivation.

An earlier investment strategy was to buy stakes in farms and agricultural businesses in other regions, such as Africa and Australia. This had mixed results. Where inward investment forced up the cost of land, including for local farmers, this provoked a backlash. Moreover, while the Qatari sovereign wealth fund may own a productive farm in another country, it is still bound by the laws of that country, which have included measures to bar or limit exports when an over-riding need is food supplies for the local population. This is a perfectly understandable policy, of course, but it does diminish the value of the investment from the Qatari perspective.

In the 2010s, the investment strategy pivoted more strongly towards onshoring food production, to strengthen diversity and continuity of supply amid economic uncertainty. Advances in agricultural technology made this transition possible: hydroponics, vertical farming, and artificial intelligence enable high productivity of a range of foods, requiring little land and using water efficiently, shielded from the desert sun.

Since the Qatar government began the policy of investing in onshoring production, global food inflation has risen, largely owing to the conflict in Ukraine. This further vindicates the policy, as onshoring helps curb inflationary pressures. In addition, the government has subsidised producers, which is the most efficient way of helping consumers cope with a rising cost of living, compared with wage rises or subsidising consumer incomes, because it has the additional benefit of maintaining supply.

Agriculture has been an area of success in policy terms in Qatar in recent years. The next article will feature some of the ingenious ways in which a variety of foodstuffs are being produced in Qatar, often with low environmental impact.

Published in the?Gulf Times?28 August 2023

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