Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.
One issue reportedly delaying UAE investment in Pakistan is the Gulf state appearing to want “blanket exemption” from Islamabad’s agricultural export policies.
The United Arab Emirates is seeking to invest in agricultural projects in Kazakhstan as part of its efforts to secure food supplies.
President of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed, has said that in order to secure food supply for the country, the government wants to invest in farmland in Kazakhstan
Jordan's Agriculture Ministry will soon appoint a private sector company to manage its substantial investment in farmland in Sudan.
The UAE is actively looking at acquiring farmland in Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa and South America in an effort to ensure the availability of food stocks, according to the UAE Minister of Economy.
China's Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) was drafting policies to encourage domestic companies to rent or buy land abroad for farming, especially for planting soy bean, the EO learned. The MOA had identified five regions, including Central Asia, Russia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, for five major Chinese state-owned farming companies to invest in.
Both public and private sector investors in the Gulf are also looking at ways to improve local food supplies, by investing in a range of outlets from arable farm land in the Sudan, Algeria and Pakistan to introduce new technology to enhance the local production of foodstuffs and grains, livestock, poultry and fish.
Globalisation has taken yet another twist with some Middle Eastern countries deciding to grow their crops in other countries.
The Dubai-based think-tank Gulf Research Centre, in its food inflation report released last month, noted that agriculture production in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) countries is on the decline, and its exposure to unstable global food supplies would increase in the future. It called on the GCC to develop links with countries rich in arable land.
Leasing farms on contract in Arab countries such as Iraq, Egypt and Sudan might be an option to deal with severe shortage of agriculture lands and water in Bahrain.
