Doha: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) represented by the Agricultural Department has distributed 72 greenhouses to 24 productive farms.
The initiative aims at supporting local farms to continue vegetables production during summer. The fresh support with greenhouses will encourage beneficiary agricultural farms to increase their production, the Ministry has tweeted.
Under other different services, the Ministry provided 6,010 baskets of seeds to 435 farms. A total of 452 farms with cultivated lands in the area of 13,600 Dunam also received services of ploughing and levelling from the Ministry.
The Agricultural Affairs Department provided guidance to the farmers. During May and June, 2021, a team of experts from the Department made 788 visits to the farms to provide necessary agricultural guidance to farmers. A total of 696 visits were also made to inspect the corps and farms during the period of study.
The supports are part of a multi-million Qatari Riyal project of MME to support the local farms to increase the agricultural produce to the sufficient level.
The State Food Security Projects 2019-2023 which was launched by MME, targets to make Qatar 70 percent self-sufficient in fresh vegetable production by 2023.
To achieve the goal, the projects focus to increase local agricultural produce in two ways.
The first way is to boost existing farms by making them fully and round-the-year productive with the support of greenhouses, latest agricultural technologies and seeds, fertilisers and marketing platforms.
The second way is to launch new major projects with the support of private sector under which a number of projects already launched and now they are under construction.
In January this year, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment revealed to establish plant factories to ensure production of leafy vegetables round the year. The agricultural season in the country is limited to some months so the idea behind the plan is to provide leafy vegetables year-round with the help of proposed plant factories.
The number of agricultural farms reached to 953 at present from 832 farms in 2017 which produce vegetables in large quantity and supply them to local market. The Agricultural Research Department is also conducting a research work with Qatar University that will help equipping greenhouses with modern technologies.
The national strategic plan of food security focused on increasing favourite vegetables for citizens and expatriates like zucchini, tomato, eggplant and cucumber.
The food security strategy of the country is based on four pillars – raising quantity of local fresh food products, enhancing supply chain inside the country, improving strategic reserves and international trade.
