According to the experts that held an Outlook forum in the UAE’s agriculture field, they do not see the need of pursuing it in their country. However this statement seemed very far from the truth since many families have based all their lives around farming and are actually surviving mainly on that.
Although it is true that the UAE doesn’t have the capacity to auto satisfy its needs completely it manages to make a certain type of crop that has been useful for centuries. But according to the organizers of the Agribusiness forum what they do not understand the most is the fact that some agricultural decisions are based on the extensive use of water when it is such a limited resource that the country has to take care of.
It has been reported that almost half of the countries renewable water resources has been drained in just twenty years while the demanding is still increasing every year at a high rate. At some point some had proposed the use of water that has been desalinated for irrigation purposes and this solution was found to be not only too costly but it was also responsible for the emissions of carbon. That is why families continue using most of the time their personal well that allows them to have so much water that they don’t think about the preservation of their natural resource which accelerates the depletion of their groundwater.
That is why some experts proposed the beginning of a program that will push farmers to start using “smart farming” practices that will allow them to pursue their agricultural related activities. Some of the propositions they said will help preserve water were the selection of crops that have tendency of not using great quantities of water.
UAE: End of Agriculture
