Food Security in the United Arab Emirates; the Role of the State in Overseas Farm Crops Production

Abstract

With its increasing population and continuing rapid infrastructural development in order to deal with international events such as Expo 2020, The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has created a pull-in environment for a large international labor force eager to work and settle down in the country. Food security has become an important issue as a result of the population growth and the labour force increase. The aim of this paper is to review and analyze a number of approaches, which could point the way to fostering policy options for achieving long term and sustainable food security for the UAE. Within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the UAE produces an extremely limited amount of its necessary foodstuffs, and as the UAE population increased from 557,000 in 1975 to over 8.5million at the end of 2012, and during that time the annual expenditure on food imports exceeded AED 41.7billion (Arab Emirate Dirham, 1 USD=3.67 Dirham). In fact the country depends almost entirely on imports, especially cereals. Rice, for example, is a vital staple primarily imported from India, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam. This paper focuses on the UAE alternatives to deal with food security by growing food in some friendly countries. Alternatives of 1) increasing food production locally; 2) direct importation; and 3) leasing farmland for food production in other friendly countries are examined to answer the main question raised in this paper.