Agricultural production from local farms meet over 15 percent of the country's demand currently, up from 12 percent in 2014, helped by the support from the Ministry of Municipality and Environment. The Ministry provides a lot of support to local farms to increase production and to achieve self-sufficiency of agricultural resources. It provides seeds, pesticides, agricultural tools and many other services at subsidised prices. It also buys dates from local market at QR6.5 for 1kg as a support.
"From the last year, agricultural production contributes 15 percent, while in 2014 it was only 12 percent and our vision in 2030 is to achieve self-sufficiency and export agricultural products," said Khalifa Al Ansari, head of local farms at agricultural affairs of the Ministry.
The total area of agricultural land in Qatar is 65,000 hectare, and the number of local farms is 1,290, according to 2015 statistics. The number of green house farms has reached 3,700 in 230 local farms. “In the first quarter of this year, the total sales of the winter vegetable markets were 5,113 tonnes,” said Al Ansari.
The Ministry had organised five annual activities as a support to local farms, and produced 300,000 cartons for farmers. “Three new farms are to be opened soon in Umm Ghuwailina on Salwa Road to produce fodder”, he said, adding that, “in 2014 the local farms produced 546,000 tonnes of fodder, and the production increased in 2016 to reach to 561,000 tonnes.
The idea was to diversify the sources of income for farmers, and to make it easy for them to sell their products to customers without any mediator.
