Qatar’s Minister of Municipality and Environment and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs HE Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Subaie, during his speech on World Food Day, highlighted the country’s efforts in building an efficient, flexible and resilient food system.
Through achieving Qatar’s national vision and implementing its national food security strategy the country is creating an effective food system to meet urgent challenges and risks as well as working to secure the food needs of the population, in cooperation with the private sector, the minister noted.
In his speech on World Food Day, which falls on October 16, HE Dr. al-Subaie said that the celebration of the day represents a very important opportunity in strengthening international and awareness-raising efforts aimed at improving food production systems and optimal use of natural resources to achieve food security and sustainable development.
Within the framework of reaching the desired goals in food security, several strategic projects related to food security have been implemented to lessen the gap between supply and demand in the local market of various high-quality agricultural products.
The minister pointed out that an appropriate and sufficient strategic stock of basic food commodities has been formed in the country, in cooperation with partners from the private sector. The country is also working on developing internal and external food supply chains, and building facilities for food security warehouses in Hamad Port on an area of more than 500,000 sq m for storing food commodities. These facilities include buildings for the manufacture, transformation, and refining of some food commodities for local, regional and external use.
HE Dr. al-Subaie pointed out that the challenges that the world faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had cast a shadow on the livelihoods of individuals, especially in the ability to access sufficient and appropriate food. The world needs to work more aggressively than ever to intensify its efforts for coordination and convergence in the field of policies and development plans for sustainable food production.
Qatar is looking forward to continuing technical and economic cooperation with the global communities to attain the common goals in supporting the transition to more efficient, comprehensive, sustainable, and resilient agricultural and food systems to meet the food needs of the country.
