It is no secret Qatar’s intention is to be a regional and global force in food production. Qatar’s ambitions towards food security for its population have seen the country invest heavily in food and agricultural policies, infrastructure, market updates, ports, and storage reserves.
Furthermore, Qatar has also increased its interest in food security research and established a fund to sponsor agricultural and food research. It has developed the national strategy for nutrition, including guidelines, standards, labels, and posters for nutrition while providing healthy food and nutrients from minerals and vitamins and intensifying efforts to adapt to climate change and preserve land, water, and marine resources.
Consequently, Qatar is poised to promote actions and policies to reduce food loss and waste in the supply chain, improving production capacity and encouraging production throughout the year to deal with the critical summer months. Critically, Qatar is adopting production methods compatible with the environment, achieving global best practices in food safety and quality standards, improving market access, and financing local producers to improve the economic viability and attractiveness of local food production and food processing. Besides, recent research by Economist Intelligence Research Unit ranked Qatar first among Arab countries and 24th globally in the 2021 Global Food Security Index (GFSI).
Yesterday, the Islamic Organisation for Food Security (IOFS) began a three-day IOFS Strategic Commodities and Food Safety Forum in Doha. During the event organized in partnership with the Ministry of Municipality, the Minister of Municipality H E Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie stated Qatar’s commitment to food security by highlighting its development pillars. He noted several factors like diversification, boosting local production, and many more as areas of interest for Qatar.
Meanwhile, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Affairs Ahmad Sengendo said the forum would facilitate discussions and present solutions to food sustainability among member nations. He stressed the need to take the required measures to implement the organization’s action plan for 2025. The forum will review the experiences of the IOFS member states, focusing on building technical and knowledge capacities and exchanging experiences of research institutes of member states. Conclusively, the forum hopes to create a mechanism to integrate the methodologies of the IOFS and the OIC towards food development and plans to implement the healthy food and food safety programme from 2022 to 2023.
