A plan to feed the nation

development > tag this

A PLAN TO FEED THE NATION F

BY AYSWARYA MURTHY

Qatar Today explores the drivers behind the nation’s new food security master plan and some of the challenges this grand food experiment will seek to tackle.

58 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013

ood. It’s so fundamental and personal that in many languages the word “food” also means “life”. It equally dictates and is shaped by our lifestyle. It can just as easily conjure up memories as it can topple governments. Wars have been waged over it on battlefields and dinner tables.

In getting from the farm to the fork, it traverses countless miles, undergoes dozens of transformations, propping up hundreds of companies and supporting millions of livelihoods. Zooming out to the macroeconomic level, unravelling the web and finding a secure and cosy place for your citizens in the chain is as exciting as it is exhausting.

With Qatar’s new National Food Security Plan that is presently under review by a committee headed by HE Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, the prime minister, the journey has been doubly so because of Qatar's unique position in the world, both geographically and economically. We look under the wraps to see how this is going to shape Qatar’s relationship with food over the next few years.

Chew on this Today, over 92% of the food consumed in Qatar comes from outside its borders. While this is undoubtedly skewed, Qatar’s options are fiercely limited by extremely limited rainfall (less than 76 mm/year), depleted aquifers, a harsh climate and limited arable land. Domestic production totals around 0.1 million metric tonnes which is 0.9% of the total food produced in the entire GCC region. And yet, astonishingly, Qatar spent close to 60% of its water budget between 2003 and 2007 on agriculture (according to UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's Aquastat), producing food that eventually met only 7.2% of its consumption needs.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, by 2020 the country will be spending close to $3.3 billion on food imports.

The forecast increase in food consumption (over 5% by 2017, says Alpen Capital) will only serve to exacerbate this. When a country is also severely import-dependent, the slightest fluctuation in global availability and price (or even the mere hint of it) can have an immediate and drastic

impact at the consumer level. Add to this the high-risk choke points along our import routes like the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz (45% of our food imports come through here). While Abdu Al Assiri, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation representative in the region, commented that “countries such as Qatar (with more solid macroeconomics) can absorb food price fluctuations with virtually no negative effects felt at households level”, when quizzed about a worst-case scenario for the population of Qatar (i.e. being seriously under threat of hunger) he ranked “abnormally disrupted geopolitical combinations leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz” on a par with a man-made or natural catastrophe in the Gulf. Iran has on several occasions threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in response to increased economic sanctions. For a country like Qatar, with its unmatched wealth and global ambitions, to be at the mercy of these volatile external factors for its most basic need is a paradox that hurts both national interests and ego.

"We couldn’t just wait and react to situations as they unfolded; we had to find a way to get ahead of them," said Jonathan Smith, Director of Communications for the Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP).

Waking up to smell the coffee Qatar’s vulnerability with regards to food security was driven home during the 2008 global food price crisis that had a staggering effect on many economies and led to social unrest and political turmoil. Another, more recent, example was the impact of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s ban on exports of poultry last year. “Here we are, this hypermodern country, building incredible museums and preparing to host the World Cup in ten years, and yet one of our suppliers calls off supply and there is a shortage overnight with very little, if any, chicken on many of the shelves for about two to three weeks,” remarks Smith. “Until a problem like this one arises, it sometimes isn’t really obvious that there are issues in the system that we need to address. These kinds of moments shine light on the fact that though our national food system, designed originally to serve a population of under 250,000, has managed to function remarkably well under the pressures of rapid growth, it has far too little coordination and too much strain,” he says.

Established in 2008 with a mandate to research the problem and develop a fully-integrated national plan based on these findings, the QNFSP has put three years of research and a process of intensive analysis, economic modelling and planning into the four-volume, 2,000-page plan that has been presented to His Highness the Emir and members of the government.

“A task force representing 17 stakeholder groups from ministries and business leaders to fishermen and farmers was brought together and an intensive consultation period of sit-down interviews was conducted for more than 40 weeks,” Smith explains, taking us through the process. “We built on what we had heard from local leaders by working with subject matter experts in Qatar and from around the globe – architects of some national food security policies from throughout the world, economists, food scientists, experts from the UN and other international programmes – to ask them about what they had learned from their own work and how they would see it applying in Qatar.”

Zahra Babar, Assistant Director for Research at Georgetown University's Centre for International and Regional Studies, says the QNFSP’s identified challenges to increasing domestic food production have been the conditions of severe water scarcity, and the high energy costs of desalination. “Aligned with these concerns QNFSP

"Whether it is identifying the best crop mix, technologies and practices, experimenting on innovative water-saving solutions, developing a qualified workforce or creating the right market conditions for local farmers and service providers to operate sustainable businesses, Qatar is the ideal workshop and the solutions that emerge here will have a radical impact in other regions throughout the world."

JONATHAN SMITH Director of Communications Qatar National Food Security Programme

QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013 > 59

development > tag this Vulnerability of MENA countries to food price spikes Fiscal strength Bahrain

UAE

100

Jordan

Kuwait

Qatar Oman Yemen

80

Saudi Arabia

Tunisia

60

Government fiscal balance (% of GDP)

Morocco -35

-25

-15

-5

5 40

Egypt 20 GCC countries Other MENA countries Size of circle denotes gross national income per capita

Iran 0

15

25

35

Grain import dependency (% share of consumption)

Import dependence

Algeria

ECKART WOERTZ Senior Research Fellow Associate Barcelona Centre for International Affairs

QATAR FOOD PRODUCTION AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY QATAR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

QATAR FOOD PRODUCTION

ITS MAIN FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE IS OBESITY AND UNHEALTHY DIETS. SOME MIGRANT LABOURERS FACE FOOD SECURITY RISKS IF THEY ARE NOT FULLY PAID IN TIME. THIS ALSO CARRIES A GREAT REPUTATION RISK AHEAD OF THE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP 2020 AND WOULD NEED TO BE ADDRESSED. FOR A CRISIS SITUATION QATAR NEEDS STRATEGIC STORAGE OF BASIC FOOD ITEMS. IT WILL ALWAYS NEED TO RELY ON GLOBAL FOOD MARKETS AND TO MAKE THEM MORE RELIABLE AND LIQUID IT COULD ENGAGE MORE PROACTIVELY WITH GLOBAL FOOD DIPLOMACY AND UNDERTAKE SUSTAINABLE, SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE AGRO-INVETSMENTS.

0.11 million metric tonnes

ACCORDING TO WOERTZ, QATAR IS MOSTLY FOOD SECURE BUT THERE A FEW PRIORITIES THAT THE FOOD PLAN MUST ADDRESS RIGHT AWAY.

Milk 0.104

CAGR 1.1%

0.10

14.4%

Meat

0.095

6.3%

0.094 Fruites

1.8%

0.09 0.086

Cereals

0.085

0.2% 7.2%

Total

0.08 2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

has also raised questions around sustainability, climate change, and how to establish a green economy. Developing innovative approaches to drylands/arid-zone agriculture is of crucial importance to QNFSP, and much effort is going towards generating technologically innovative solutions that will stimulate low-carbon, resource-efficient, sustainable food production,” she says.

Keeping this in mind, what can be expected from the National Food Security Plan, what does its strategic response to national food insecurity look like, and does it address some of the most pressing needs of the hour?

Being smart about self-sufficiency Food security is often confused with self-sufficiency. But self-sufficiency is not the ideal way to go about this. “Around the world, even countries that could be food

60 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013

15.3%

Vegetables

0%

10%

20%

self-sufficient, thanks to their endowment in natural resources like land and water, do not select that policy because full-fledged self-sufficiency would probably come at an overall cost that is considered inappropriate,” says Al Assiri. So, in its strictest terms, self-sufficiency isn’t part of Qatar’s ambitions, and rightly so. “Trying to grow all of our food would be fundamentally irresponsible for a dryland nation such as ours,” says Smith. “Considering that we have limited water, it’s foolish to waste those resources when we can easily buy many of the more water-intensive items in the global market.”

The Kingdom of Saudia Arabia burnt its fingers earlier with its aggressive wheat production programme that aimed at total self-sufficiency. (It achieved it, too. In fact Saudi Arabia was the sixth-largest exporter of wheat in the world in the 1990s.)

“But the experiment was an expensive and

ecologically unsound attempt at self-sufficiency [because of the depletion of groundwater to critical levels], which it abandoned some years ago,” Babar reminds us.

The key, Smith says, is to work closely with local producers to fill the strategic gaps – to grow what we should grow (crops that are needed to balance risks of interruption in trade or those that are of higher nutritional and market value if they are produced fresh locally), trade for what we should trade for, and have a marketplace that helps both parts work safely, effectively and fairly for both the business owners and the customers.

Even with the plan’s goals scaled down to more realistic levels (QNFSP published initial research in 2011 that identified ways to reach up to 70% self-sufficiency by 2023.

The plan as it stands today is working towards 40%), it is no less ambitious. It takes a broad and balanced approach that cuts across the entire national food system, consisting of four aspects – international trade and investment, domestic production, the local marketplace (local warehousing, trading systems, transportation, regulations, pricing standards etc.) and strategic reserves of food and water.

Constraints as benchmarks Comparing Qatar’s food security plan with other existing ones (or contingencies), Smith says: “Most other plans largely revolve around the economic role of the food sector (e.g. in the US), or developing the agriculture sector to boost the economy (Kenya) or just finding ways to feed its starving citizens (Haiti or Ethiopia). Our challenge is much more fundamental: How do we boost our national resiliency? What can we do today to protect precious water resources, increase our efficiency, diversify our economy and encourage the kind of growth that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable?”

To arrive at a plan, those working at QNFSP had to zero down on their constraints and chalk out their options based on these, starting with the most critical one – water.

“No option went into the plan that did not first pass the test for responsible use of water. It is one of the fundamental and defining characteristics of our situation. Therefore, instead of starting with the question ‘How much do we want to grow?’ we asked ourselves: ‘How much water can be responsibly budgeted to produce the most strategic blend of crops we need?’,” says Smith.

“Technology, at a certain cost, could compensate for the lack of natural

resources like water,” Al Assiri points out, “So to a certain extent self-sufficiency comes down to a country’s willingness to pay for it.” With that certainly not being a constraint, tall investments are set to go into technologies that ensure water efficiency, like cutting-edge greenhouses and better irrigation and cooling systems.

By asking questions consistently on how resources should be best used, QNFSP has identified several options that together have the potential to boost domestic production by five times, on the same amount of land currently in use and – here’s the interesting part – using one-third less water than what is being used today, Smith says. “And it all started by talking about our constraints instead of our ambitions.”

The holy trinity of food security: Water, energy and food Qatar’s two significant freshwater underground reservoirs, naturally fed from the minimal amount of rainfall and through natural underground hydrogeological systems that stream water supplies from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are a treasure that has been squandered away. The aquifers recharge at a natural rate of approximately 56 million cubic metres annually, but Qatar currently extracts approximately four times this amount of freshwater from the aquifers each year. “Today Qatar has only three days of non-aquifer water storage, and even with new facilities that are under construction, water reserves for the entire country will only reach about 10 days.

We need this natural storage system back,” Smith says. Under the aquifer recharge system modelled in the National Food Security Plan, it is hoped that approximately two years' worth of freshwater volumes can be recharged back into the reservoirs by 2025. A two-pronged approach will be implemented to achieve this – highly efficient irrigation practices on farms coupled with a new source of freshwater supplies for agriculture developed using desalination technologies and renewable energy.

This brings us to the next part of the equation.

Desalination does pose some environmental challenges, like its high energy footprint and the careful disposal of the saline effluent generated in the process. But in the light of the fact that there is no Plan B for dryland countries like Qatar (“If your country has the cancer of water insecurity, desalination is the chemotherapy – it’s the last resort. It’s no surprise therefore that 70% of the installed desalination capacity in the

"Food waste is one issue where all consumers can make a difference," says Danielle, talking about our personal stake and responsibility in making smart and mindful choices in our everday lives. "We waste 1.3 billion tons of food annually and about 40% of that is on the consumer side.

We can buy less food. We can order less at restaurants. We can trust our senses, rather than sell-buy and use buy dates, to know when food has gone bad."

DANIELLE NIERENBERG Co-founder, Food Tank

QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013 > 61

development > tag this

ZAHRA BABAR Assistant Director for Research, Georgetown University's Centre for International and Regional Studies Babar hazards a guess at a few key issues that the QNFSP is likely to focus on DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPREHENSIVE TRADE AND IMPORT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY IMPROVEMENT AND EXPANSION OF THE DOMESTIC FOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRY STRENGTHENING FOOD VALUE CHAINS AND DISTRIBUTION FROM FARM TO FORK EXPANDING FOOD STORAGE CAPACITY AND STRATEGIC FOOD RESERVES OF COMMODITIES SUCH AS WHEAT, RICE, FLOUR, SUGAR AND OILS TO HEDGE AGAINST RISKS CAUSED BY FLUCTUATION IN PRICES OR EXPORT BANS GLOBAL INVESTMENT IN COMMERCIALLY VIABLE VENTURES THAT SUPPORT NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY.

62 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013

world is in this region,” Smith says), we just have to adopt more sustainable methods.

“Though current research shows no conclusive evidence that increased salinity levels in the Gulf are tied to the desalination practices by Qatar, the plan recommends broad and permanent ongoing research to monitor the Gulf ecosystem,” Smith points out. “After all, it’s in our own interest. From a food security stand, some of our healthiest and most accessible food supply comes from the sea and we have to protect that.”

On the energy front, though Qatar today powers the desalination process with natural gas, which is one of the cleanest energy sources in the market, the plan is to shift to a renewable source like solar energy. “When you take into account factors like solar hours and the UV intensity seen here, we have three times the solar energy capacity of countries like Germany and Japan who have long been global leaders in developing solar energy technology,” Smith enthuses. “A large-scale project that could generate the 700-800 MW that will be required to deliver the water and energy requirements of national food security will create significant opportunities for private sector enterprises (companies like GreenGulf and QSTech that are working with Qatar Science Technology Park) to pioneer development in this high-tech sector. Addressing the water issue, that's so critical to maintaining food security, with the help of solar energy projects expands the positive returns on the initiative even further.”

All roads lead to food security Smith says that many of the recommendations can be achieved within ongoing infrastructure projects and through reforms that require little or no extra funding. “In many cases, delivering increased capacity for maintaining food security can come through adding a new objective for existing projects,” he says, giving an example.

“Ashghal is in the process of expanding the Doha Central Market, which was originally built in the 1980s. This market is not only critical to how we trade imported and locally-grown food, but it’s also a vital link in getting food to customers in a safe, nutritious and affordable manner. Bringing food security-related design, operation and performance parameters into these kinds of infrastructure improvements can often mean that the same project delivers even greater value for the public.”

Another, more exciting, collaboration is the one with the Qatar 2022 team in the

research and development of efficient cooling technologies, announced at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York this year. “Our challenges are similar: reduce energy demand, conserve water and deliver an environmentally and economically responsible solution for cooling large spaces. The model we are investigating with Q22 will increase water efficiency by nine times. We are also working with Q22 to see if the training fields being built for the World Cup, with their hectare-sized pitches and hybrid cooling systems, can be converted to high-efficiency greenhouses for local food production. So the nation gets the added benefit of a 20-plus-year return on infrastructure that was originally only required for a matter of months. This is just one of the examples of how Qatari farmers, business owners and consumers will benefit for years to come from bringing a food and water security focus to large national projects such as Q22,” he says.

“The bottom line, if you took the whole body of recommendations as they stand today, over the next 10 years, we’d spend about QR4 billion a year, roughly equivalent to subsidy levels that Qatar already invests, on food issues,” Smith concludes. All things considered, the plan seems to be as economically sound as one could hope for.

Beyond local farms But there are sceptics who fear Qatar might be over-reaching. "Qatar can produce some food locally, but I doubt that it should do it to the extent QNFSP envisages," says Eckart Woertz, Senior Research Fellow Associate at Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. He specialises in Middle East affairs and was previously with the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai. Woertz's concerns lie in the use of copious amount of desalinated water and the ecologically harmful disposal of brine. "Even for other countries with a larger population like Saudi Arabia, domestic production by these means and to this extent is not an option. They will need to focus on food trade and storage," he says.

And rest assured, the planners at QNFSP have given these crucial concerns their due.

Even though we have dwelled largely on the part of the plan that focuses on domestic production, Smith assures us that this is only because “it is an exciting, innovative chunk of the plan that is fun to unpackage”.

In reality, this is only one fourth of the plan, which has “a significant focus on improving coordination and connectivity between the parts of the national food system and

updating policies and regulations around pricing, food safety, import procedures etc.”

“We need more food warehousing, more cold storage and more transport infrastructure. Fortunately we are in a period of development and so this is the right time to fix these kinds of market infrastructure,” Smith says.

The team has also worked on responses to situations like disruption of trade routes.

“We have to ensure we have contingency plans for alternate supply routes for key classes of food. Nearly all of the food we import comes through either of the two points of entry – Strait of Hormuz or the KSA border (a small amount of perishable food is delivered by air). And typically a majority of each category of food comes through only one of these pathways. In other words, certain vegetables only come to us by road while others only come by sea. While that is sufficient for day-to-day conditions, without contingency plans and business arrangements in place with suppliers and logistic providers, it can be difficult and costly to respond to a closure or interruption.

Even beyond the issue of route interruption, strategically diversifying routing and suppliers puts Qatar in a better position to negotiate when conditions in the global market fluctuate. We have to diversify the routing and strategically diversify the supply system,” he says.

Also, since trade is and will remain an important chunk of food security, the strategies involved will also have to be revisited. “There was a time when it looked like buying up farmland was one of the better options available to countries like Qatar.

But today there are a wide variety of food security-driven strategies for investment, both in farm operations abroad and in companies that are involved in innovative agro-technologies,” he says.

Danielle Nierenberg, Co-founder of Food Tank, echoes Smith's sentiments about ‘land grabs’. “Qatar and other countries need to find ways to regulate governments and corporations so that these land acquisitions don’t come at the expense of smallscale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa,” she says. And the National Food Security Plan seems to put forward recommendations that address her concerns. “Instead of just owning farmland in another country, Qatar is well positioned to make farm operations abroad even better through the technology and investment resources we have available. We believe that these sorts of models are going to be critical to international

trade strategy,” Smith says.

Sailing in the same boat Qatar is one of the 60 countries (together home to over two billion people), categorised as drylands, that face food insecurity. Many of them are our neighbours. “Countries of the MENA region share commonalities that leave ample space for synergies and complementarities,” Al Assiri comments. “This opens opportunities for dedicated studies and analysis on at integrated level, possibly fostered through entities such as the GCC Secretariat.” He also has another grand, far-reaching idea – an integrated system of food storage at the level of the Gulf sub-region. “This could represent an ambitious endeavour for co-operation among countries, and Qatar could soundly contribute at the political, as well as at financial and technical, levels to both these opportunities.”

Smith outlines another reason why close collaboration with other dryland nations would be mutually beneficial. “The scariest thing that can happen when 92% of your food comes from trade is a crisis in the market. Import-dependent countries like us often hurt each other by driving the price into a panic,” he says. Currently only 18% of the world’s wheat production and 6% of rice production is exported. When the markets are so thin, even slight imbalances in supply and demand will result in major shifts in prices.

The Global Dry Land Alliance was born out of this need to collaborate (“think of it as a NATO for food”). Conceptualised and led by Qatar, the alliance proposes to bring together “countries with similar challenges to support each other in building resiliency and minimising the human and economic impact of food-related risk and crisis”. In his first international speech at the UN General Assembly this year as the new leader of Qatar, HH the Emir touched upon this, calling upon countries to join in and support the initiative.

Smith says the working group building the alliance is currently doing the development and diplomatic work required to bring nations together for a treaty-based alliance.

“The GDLA working group is bringing the countries to the table to work on the very difficult, sensitive and even emotional issue of food. For the past two years an expert team based in Qatar and led by HE Ambassador Bader Al Dafa has been conducting face-toface bilateral meetings and technical sessions to hammer out a deal. It’s slow and steady work, but when it is done dryland nations will have a table at which to address this critical issue.”

QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013 > 63