UAE Farmers Council has discussed ways to enhance food safety and modern farming systems to move forward in efforts to provide food safely and sustainably for all members of the community in the Emirates.
Her Excellency Mariam Bint Mohammed Almheiri, UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment, chaired the sixth meeting of the Farmers’ Council. 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 Mariam Almheiri affirmed that the wise leadership of the UAE 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.
Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri UAE Minister Climate Change & Environment
“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. 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.”
The meeting discussed the developments of the initiative to enhance the sustainability of national farms, which aims to strengthen partnership and communication with the government and private sectors, and the initiatives and plans to enhance the agricultural sector and local production and monitor the implementation of the initiative’s action plan.
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.
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.
According to the statement, “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.”
