Xinhua, Dubai :The United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister for food and agriculture Dr. Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad said here Friday the Gulf Arab desert state, was committed to support joint Arab efforts to set up a strategic food reserve in response to the world food crisis, state news agency WAM reported.Bin Fahad also emphasized the need to establish and implement Arab-wide mechanisms to achieve a level of agricultural integration necessary to maintain the required stockpile of food. The Gulf Arab states, all of them major oil suppliers, have to import 90 percent of their food needs, according to Alpen Capital in Dubai.Bin Fahad said in an released statement on the occasion of the Arab Agricultural Day to be observed on Saturday, Sept. 27, under the theme “Strategic Arab Food reserve to Face World Food Crisis”, the current global shortage of food crises resulting from either natural factors such as desertification, drought, low rainfall or human elements such as turmoil and growing populations, “require strategic food stocking strategies from the Arab community”.The minister urged countries within the region to intensify efforts to achieve this goal and reduce their dependence on imported foods in order to close the food gap which reached around 35 billion dollars in 2012.According to the minister, the region has about 71 million hectares of agricultural land and over 340 million livestock, and produces more than four million tons of fish annually. But these capitals were not fully exploited as the Arab agricultural sector and other food security-related segments continue to face “various challenges” that need to be solved in order to establish a well- developed agricultural environment that can contribute effectively to Arab food security.The scarcity of water resources is one of the key challenges facing the Arab agricultural sector. The Arab water security strategy prepared by the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development states that, should the domestic population continue to grow, the Arab region will need around 550 billion cubic meters of water by 2025 to maintain food security. This is equivalent to more than twice the amount of currently available water, which stands at an estimated 257.5 billion cubic meters per annum.
