Water Conservation Becomes a Higher Priority in U.A.E.

DUBAI â€" Running a farm is not easy in the Middle East, part of a region, along with North Africa, defined by the World Bank as the most water-scarce in the world.

Farmers in Abu Dhabi are now working with the government on ambitious new plans to cut agricultural water use in half by 2014 to conserve water and ensure sustainability.

According to the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council, as reported last month by a local English-language newspaper, The National, the emirate annually uses 275 billion liters of water, or 73 billion gallons.

Experts estimate that more than 70 percent of all water used in the emirate goes into irrigation for agriculture and urban parkland.

The Farmers Services Center, a government agency formed in 2009 to improve farms in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi, introduced a pilot program in 2010 to provide water conservation technology to 1,500 farms. The program has since been expanded to include 6,200 farms, while 1,000 farm workers, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, have been trained to use the equipment.

“Our task now is to refocus farmers on the fact that agriculture uses a lot of water, which is in short and declining supply,” said Ray Moule, technical director of the center. “We have to be efficient in using resources and applying water to crops to make farming sustainable and get the best economic returns.”

Saving water is a unique challenge in the United Arab Emirates, not least for farmers trying to produce economically viable crops under innately hostile natural conditions of searing heat, low rainfall and barren desert soil.

Cultivars suited to the extreme climate conditions include date palm and Rhodes grass, used as an animal feed and a soil stabilizer.

Farmers also grow vegetables including tomatoes and cucumbers in greenhouses year-round.

“Currently, Abu Dhabi relies on groundwater for the majority of agriculture and its contribution to food security, making the protection and conservation of groundwater vital,” said Mohamed Yousef al-Madfaei, executive director of the Integrated Environment Policy and Planning Sector of the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency.

However, he noted, “groundwater supplies could be exhausted very soon, and its conservation is a strategic government priority.”

In a bid to make an innately artificial farming sector as sustainable as possible, upgraded irrigation systems have been installed in 1,200 farms, including date palm plantations, with plans to roll out more this year.

“Our task is to link the market with the producer and supply on a year-round basis, moving the farmers away from a narrow season of production by introducing new production techniques,” Mr. Moule said. “It’s about creating an open value chain and linking production with plans to supply for longer periods of time, as efficiently as possible.”

Beside the challenges of a hostile climate, local farmers also face huge competition from imports, with as much as 90 percent of produce consumed in the emirate currently imported from abroad, according to Mr. Moule.

“There are too many suppliers of similar products in the area who can produce cheaply, so the market is actually well-supplied most of the year,” he said. “So we have to deal with a market that is oversupplied anyway with products from neighboring markets which, although of lower quality, and are cheaper than our products.”

Still, the government is prioritizing the development of Abu Dhabi’s nascent farming industry in a bid to improve food security without overstraining increasingly scarce water resources even as the population grows and global climate change advances.

It considers support for a domestic farming industry to be strategically important in order to protect against any sudden cutoff in supplies as a result of either political or natural causes.

Among other considerations, projections by the International Food Policy Research Institute point to world market price increases of as much as 50 percent for cereals and other basic food commodities over the period to 2050. Markets in Africa and Asia are likely to be particularly affected as temperatures rise and natural disasters, including floods, in countries like Thailand, India and parts of Africa become more frequent, forcing traditional farming methods to change.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 2, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.