Skip to content Skip to Search
Skip navigation

Agriculture

Agriculture news from the Middle East. All the important stories, exclusive interviews, plus authoritative opinion and analysis

Foxtail millet could help Gulf food security

Resilient foxtail millet could aid Gulf food security 

Researchers in Abu Dhabi have identified what they claim is a highly climate-resilient cereal crop – never farmed at scale before in the Middle East – that could pose a solution to the region’s escalating food security problem.  Michael Purugganan, professor of biology at NYU Abu Dhabi, and his team published a study this summer […]

Field, Outdoors, Nature

World food price index at two-year low

The United Nations food agency’s world price index fell in August to a new two-year low, reversing a rebound seen the previous month, as a decline in most food commodities offset increases for rice and sugar. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 121.4 points in August against a […]

UAE salmon farm

UAE fish farm angles for $200m to produce Atlantic salmon

A fish farming company in the UAE aims to raise $200 million to produce Atlantic salmon locally. Ocean Harvest needs the investment to build a 100,000 square metre facility in Ras Al Khaimah. Jawad Jamil, co-founder and CEO of Ocean Harvest, said they were appealing to sovereign wealth funds across the Mena region, impact and […]

Sugar cane workers in the Philippines

Philippines rules out import on ample sugar stocks  

The Philippines has plentiful stocks of sugar as it enters a new crop year this month and thus has no immediate plans to import any additional volume, the chief of the industry regulator said on Thursday. “At this very moment, as the milling season starts, we have very ample two-month buffer stocks. For crop year […]

Turkey and Russia seek to revive grain export deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan on Monday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi as Ankara and the United Nations seek to revive a Ukraine grain export deal that helped ease a global food crisis. Russia quit the deal in July – a year after it was brokered by […]

Red Sea Global farm co-op Tamala

Red Sea Global farm co-op builds on Saudi food plans

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Global has set up a farm cooperative to supply its resorts, amid wider plans to boost farming and food security. The Red Sea Farm Cooperative, also known as Tamala, aims to build on Saudi Arabia’s record agricultural production levels that were achieved last year. Farmers will be able to sell their […]

Desert farming

Inside the $100m plan to transform desert farming

Total cropland in Mena countries decreased by 2.4 percent between 2003 and 2018 – the sharpest drop in the world – according to satellite imagery.   In response, a Beirut-based multilateral is seeking $100 million for a new programme to enhance innovation to increase farming productivity in a region that already had the lowest cropland […]

India's onion harvest was hit by poor rainfall, so its government moved to protect domestic supply

Gulf’s many-layered reaction to India’s new onion export tax

Omani farmers could be one of the few beneficiaries of India’s decision to impose a 40 percent export duty on onions, while UAE restaurateurs are bracing for another hike in food costs. India is the world’s biggest exporter of onions, but a lack of rain this summer has affected harvests and prices have already risen […]

Egypt set to launch sugar trading on local bourse

Egypt’s commodities exchange has invited companies to register to trade sugar on the bourse, which already offers yellow corn and wheat. Sugar will be offered on the exchange starting Thursday, exchange head Ibrahim Ashmawy said in a statement, adding that the move was in line with a government mandate “to regulate the markets of strategic […]

A Sonatrach facility in Ouargla province, eastern Algeria. The state-owned company has pledged to invest $30bn in oil and gas

Algeria’s GDP growth to slow as oil production dips

Algeria’s economic growth is expected to slow this year and in 2024 as oil production drops. Analysts at BMI, formerly Fitch Solutions, forecast that the country’s real GDP will be 2.1 percent in 2023 and 1.9 percent next year – down from 3.3 percent in 2022. Algeria’s hydrocarbon production – made up of one-third gas […]

Making bread at a bakery in Cairo. Grain and bread prices fell by 0.6 percent month-on-month

UAE signs $500m deal to supply wheat to Egypt

UAE-based agribusiness Al Dahra and the Abu Dhabi Exports Office (Adex) have signed a $500 million deal to supply Egypt with wheat. The five-year agreement, worth $100 million per year, will provide Egypt with imported milling wheat from the UAE “at competitive prices”. Egypt, a major buyer of basic commodities, has been suffering from a foreign currency crunch after […]

Olam unit’s Singapore and Saudi listing likely in 2024 

Singapore-based commodity trader Olam Group is targeting the dual listing of its agricultural unit in Singapore and Saudi Arabia by the first half of 2024, according to CEO Sunny Verghese. “Olam Agri continues to target a first-of-its-kind dual-listing in Singapore and Saudi Arabia by H1 2024, subject to receiving all requisite approvals and prevailing market […]

Mubadala Atvos sugar cane processor

Mubadala to buy 31.5% stake in Brazilian cane processor

Abu Dhabi investment fund Mubadala Capital will take an opposite direction from most of its peers in the Brazilian sugar and ethanol industry, which it plans to enter by early next year, betting on expanding output of the biofuel and looking only marginally to sugar. Bruno Serapiao, CEO of Atvos, one of the country’s largest […]

Kazakhstan exports

Kazakhstan in talks with AD Ports on agricultural exports

Kazakhstan is in talks with Abu Dhabi Ports to set up a joint venture that would help ship Kazakh agricultural exports via Iran and then Gulf ports. The Central Asian nation, a significant exporter of agricultural commodities such as grains and oilseeds, wants to ship cargoes to Iran via the Caspian Sea and have them […]

Prices in Egypt climbed 1.4% month on month in December 2023, driven by an annual increase of 60.5% in food and beverage items

High-tech greenhouse turns up heat on UAE sustainability

Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ has teamed up with Netherlands-based Safe Haven Solutions to build a high-tech greenhouse in the UAE capital. The 10-hectare facility will be built in ADQ’s AgTech Park in Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi. It will use advanced agriculture technology such as a cooling system inside the greenhouse to help […]

Saudi minister of investment Khalid al-Falih is head of Saudi Arabia's Economic Cities and Special Zones Authority

Saudi and Brazil sow seeds to partner on food security

Saudi Arabia is intensifying its trade and investment ties with Latin America in pursuit of food security and green energy, as a ministry-led delegation hunts for opportunities in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Argentina, Panama and Paraguay. A visit to São Paulo earlier this week by Khalid al-Falih, Saudi minister of investment, coincided with a Brazilian […]

AAAID aims to support Egypt's efforts to increase agricultural productivity and achieve food security

UAE’s farming task force clinches $136m supply deal

Farms in the UAE have provisionally agreed to supply food and agricultural products totalling AED500 million ($136 million) over five years to some of the country’s biggest public sector institutions.  The deal is the first to be struck by the National Farm Sustainability Initiative (NFSI) task force, a government group set up by the UAE’s […]

Tunisia President Kais Saied

Tunisia approves $87m loan to safeguard food supplies

Tunisia has approved a TND268 million ($87 million) loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to safeguard sustainable food production in the country. The Assembly of People’s Representatives (APR) gave the loan the green light. It will be used to fund the Cereal Sector Inclusive and Sustainable Support Project (Padific), a body aimed at improving […]

Workers in rice field

UAE restaurants feel the squeeze from rice restrictions

The UAE has banned the export of rice for four months, and while most restaurant owners have sufficient excess stock in place, some are concerned supply chain disruptions will lead to increased costs. The Gulf state said the ban will cover rice of all varieties, including brown rice, fully or partially milled rice and broken […]

Crowd, Person, Adult

Philippines seeks rice supply deal with India

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Saturday the country must boost its rice stocks and that he may seek a supply deal with India, worried about the potential impact of El Nino dry weather on the local harvest and about other suppliers. “I’m thinking about the national supply for rice,” Marcos told officials in […]

Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri

Cop28 urges nations to put food at heart of climate action

The UAE has called on governments around the world to put food at the centre of their climate-change agendas. Speaking at the UN Food Systems Summit in Rome on Monday, Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, the UAE’s minister of climate change and the environment and Cop28 food systems lead, invited governments to sign the Leaders Declaration […]