UAE Farmers Council Discusses Food Safety and Ways to Enhance Sustainable Farming Systems

The Council reviews financing modern agriculture projects in food security and developing the agricultural support system in the UAE

H.E Mariam Bint Mohammed Almheiri, UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE), chaired the sixth meeting of the Farmers' Council to discuss ways to enhance food safety and modern farming systems to support all members of the community in the UAE.

The meeting was attended by His Excellency Engineer Mohammed Musa Alameeri, Assistant Undersecretary for the Food Diversity Sector at the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment.

During her speech, Her Excellency affirmed that the UAE's leadership attaches utmost importance to enhancing national food security on a sustainable and climate-smart basis, ensuring safe and sufficient food for all community members now and in the future.

H.E said: "We are working in partnership with all relevant local and global entities to build a stronger and more resilient food sector capable of facing challenges.

"Modern farming technology represents one of the most important solutions to these challenges: the lack of agricultural land and scarcity of water. This also helps reduce the sector's carbon footprint and the entire food value chain and preserves natural resources from waste."

Mariam Almheiri Highlights Global Food System Innovations and Climate-smart Agriculture

Her Excellency added: "We give special importance to climate-smart modern farming systems, and there will be a great focus by the UAE and its partners on this vital file during the discussions of the Conference of the Parties (COP28), which the country will host next November.

"The UAE has pioneering experience in adopting these systems, developing traditional farms and enhancing food safety.

"We work through full cooperation with members of the Farmers' Council and all our government and private sector partners to achieve good results by increasing agricultural production, providing all means of support to national farms, and assisting farmers in reaching the market."

The meeting also addressed the program of financing modern agriculture projects in food security and developing the agricultural support system by applying targeted support to farmers and updating their data.

The council also discussed proposals to test pesticide residues in a shorter time through cooperation with the private sector to establish laboratories to analyze pesticide residues in vegetables and fruits in various emirates of the country to carry out the analyses within three to five hours per sample.

Council's Action Plan Updates

During the meeting, the updates of the council's action plan for 2023 and its main achievements so far were discussed.

In terms of the goal of developing the agricultural sector, which includes various activities and initiatives, including the Agricultural Tourism Initiative, promoting local agriculture through the tourism sector was enhanced, and the efforts of the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment in supporting agricultural tourism farms were intensified.

The Farmers Council meeting also discussed the Farms Endowment initiative, launched in cooperation with the Mohammed bin Rashid Global Centre for Endowment Consultancy, the Endowment And Minors’ Trust Foundation (AWQAF DUBAI), Majid Al Futtaim and Carrefour.

The aim is to benefit from farms surplus crops and deliver them to underprivileged families. This is achieved by collecting the surplus from farms production before the end of the agricultural season, packaging it, and giving it to the deserving.