AgraME News

With its lack of ploughable land, intense summer heat and no permanent rivers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is not the first country that springs to mind when discussing agriculture.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and the seven emirates that constitute the UAE are using ag tech to reduce its reliance on food imports, currently running at 90 percent of consumption. With its population nearly doubling in the last 20 years, the government has set itself a task of topping the Food Security Index by 2051. The developments made in areas such as controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and cropping in saline soils could be spun out to other countries beset by similar agricultural challenges. With so much invested in agriculture, and so much activity currently taking place, the UAE might become the first that springs to mind.

New AG International has written a country report that begins with a brief overview of the UAE’s agricultural trade and production. There has been considerable growth in vegetable and fruit production in the last 10 years, such as an increase in cucumber production, as well as tomato, largely reflecting the grow in greenhouse area.

Moving in the opposite direction there has been a decline in forage crop production. But at the same time new crops are being experimented with – quinoa being an example – to reduce the country’s dependency on imported food. There is even a large-scale trial to grow wheat and find a variety that is able to flourish in both the climatic conditions and the UAE soils.

Soil salinity is an issue in the UAE and this is why the country is home to a world-leading research facility – the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA). This report contains an interview with the Director General, Dr. Tarifa Alzaabi. She describes how ICBA is home to the longest-running experiment in the UAE to assess the long-term impact of different levels of irrigation water salinity on the growth and yield of 18 date palm varieties from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

ICBA is looking at how to use saline water in agriculture, as well as finding sustainable practices to improve the soil, such as biochar.

Another research centre, this one focused on specialty fertilizer, has been opened by Dubai-based RNZ Group. Managing Director Raza Soomar writes about the Centre Of Excellence for Fertilizer Technology Research (COE-FTR) that is the first-of-its-kind facility for fertilizer science and technology research in UAE. RNZ Group offers 400 different water-soluble fertilizers and granular NPK grades fully customized, says Soomar.

One of the ways the UAE is looking to reduce its dependency on food imports is through CEA. A category within CEA is vertical farming (VF),a sector receiving a lot of attention at present.

New AG International spoke with VF expert Henry Gordon-Smith and did a follow-up Q&A with him that is presented in the report. Gordon-Smith is optimistic about opportunities for VF in UAE, despite a downturn in fortunes in other parts of world. He presents some costings that show crop selection is vital. He also reveals how different energy prices exist even within UAE. Extrapolating to a global level, this shows how difficult it is to estimate production costs for VF even within a country.

In terms of sustainability, one company is building an aeroponic farm in the Liwa region of UAE. The Farms, as the company is known, is constructing the largest aeroponic Tower Farm in the Middle East, and the company is planning to begin operations in the Fall of 2024 with an aim to demonstrate its capabilities of growing over 150 different crops while opening commercial distribution routes to the food service hospitality sector.

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To read full country report and contributions from ICBA, RNZ Group, Henry Gordon Smith, The Farms, read here.

https://informa.turtl.co/story/new-ag-intl-eng-marchapril-2024/page/13