File photo.
Director of Agriculture Affairs Department at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment Yusuf Khalid Al Khulaifi has said that Mahaseel for Marketing and Agricultural Services, a subsidiary of Hassad Food Company, aims to provide better prices to farmers in the country and it serve as largest platform to market local agricultural produce.
Speaking to The Peninsula, Al Khulaifi said that the company was established following the demand of local farmers which assumed importance with growing production of local vegetables.
“Mahaseel aims at providing suitable prices to the farmers for their hard works and investments,” said Al Khulaifi adding that the company will buy local agricultural produce from farmers for marketing. He said that small and medium and small farmers will be major beneficiaries of the company.
“Mahaseel will run parallel to other marketing platforms like seasonal vegetables’ markets; Premium Qatar Farms Program; and Qatar Farms Program giving more options to farmers to choose which one is best for them,” said Al Khulaifi.
He said that the company will play bigger role compared to other marketing platforms encouraging farmers to improve the quality of their produce and increase the production. Mahaseel will open a number of new outlets to receive vegetables from local farmers.
Mahaseel products are currently available at local market. The company has supplied large quantity of local vegetables including tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, zucchini among many more in the market during the first week (from June 5 to 10) of its operation. The company has set up a center in the Central Market to collect the produce of Qatari farms.
Mahaseel was launched within food security initiatives encouraging the farmers to increase local agricultural produce to achieve the self-sufficiency of the country in vegetable production.
The company aims to increase the size and quality of local production by reducing the burden of the marketing from the farmers, providing support to local farmers through the marketing of their production, in addition to providing a variety of other agricultural services.
Since the beginning of the operation and registration in March this year, 124 local farms have been registered to market their produce through Mahaseel.
An advanced work system has been put in place to receive local produce from the farmers at the assembly point where they are being sorted out and packaged for marketing, so the produce reach to consumer in the best quality.
The Ministry of Municipality and Environment, represented by the Department of Agricultural Affairs, is exerting continuous efforts to support and encourage the owners of local farms registered in the State, in order to increase the local production of vegetables, within the Ministry’s policy to achieve self-sufficiency.
The Ministry signed contracts for the establishment of the Agricultural Marketing Centre with Hassad Food Company on March 4, 2019. These contracts included the authorization of the ministry to the company to market local vegetables of Qatari farms under the technical supervision of the Ministry.
The Ministry, in cooperation with the Mahaseel Company, developed a framework for the company, which depends on the purchase of farmers’ production of local vegetables through two programs. One programme is pre-purchase of farm produce through contract farming based on marketing contracts with registered farms in the country to purchase their production. The second programme is to purchase farm produce of all kinds of vegetables.
