All food needs met apart from rice

Abu Dhabi: “Once I construct the cottages for guests inside the farm, they will have everything to eat from this farm itself, except the rice that will be imported from India,” said Khalid Bin Butti Al Shamsi, the owner of Abu Dhabi Organic Farm.

The farm is like a self-sufficient village. “We have already successfully cultivated wheat that can be produced for our guests,” Al Shamsi said.

Wheat is a water-intensive crop and that explains why Al Shamsi does not want to cultivate it commercially. “Rice needs more water than wheat, that’s why we don’t even think of it,” he says.

Apart from 70 types of vegetables and fruit grown on it, the farm produces its own milk from cows and camels. Chicken, turkey, ostriches, ducks and quail are raised for eggs and meat.

A vast pond and man-made tanks grow fish. Honeybees provide about 3 tonnes of honey every year. Sand gazelles, horses and peacock reared on the farm are proof of the owner’s hobby. Beautiful roses grown on the periphery of the vegetables gardens are sold to hotels and restaurants, where they even find use in desserts.

Al Shamsi reckons farm tourism is a growing sector across the world and his farm cottages will be ready to receive guests soon.