Dubai: UAE has called for a combined pan-Arab effort to fight the global food crisis as the region marks Arab Agricultural Day on Saturday.
Dr Rashid Ahmad Bin Fahd, Minister of Environment and Water, said establishing and implementing Arabwide mechanisms to achieve a level of agricultural integration are necessary to maintain food stockpiles.
This year Arab Agricultural Day will be commemorated under the theme ‘Strategic Arab food reserve to face world food crisis’.
The minister urged regional countries to reduce their dependence on imported food in order to close the food deficit which reached around Dh128 billion in 2012.
He pointed out that the Arab world is rich in various types of plants, animals and fish, which is not fully exploited.
The region has about 71 million hectares of agricultural land and over 340 million livestock, and produces more than 4 million tonnes of fish annually.
Among the challenges faced by the region is limited water resources and inefficient use of water.
Bin Fahd pointed out that the average yield of cereal per hectare in the Arab world is 1.6 tonnes compared to the global average of 3.7 tonnes, which reaffirms the need to bridge the technological gap in order to enhance self-sufficiency through increased production.
Other major concerns include agricultural land degradation, misuse of fertilizers and pesticides, insufficient awareness and services provided to smallholder farms, lack of investments, and insufficient contributions of the private sector to the agricultural industries.
The Arab Water Security Strategy prepared by the Arab Organisation for Agricultural Development (AOAD) states that, should the domestic population continue to grow, the Arab region will need around 550 billion cubic metres of water by 2025 to maintain food security. This is equivalent to more than twice the amount of currently available water, which stands at an estimated 257.5 billion cubic metres per annum.
