Abu Dhabi wants private investors to fund the farms, cold chains, and water systems behind its food security push

Abu Dhabi is treating food security as an infrastructure build, and it wants private capital to pay for much of it. The emirate plans to more than double the share of basic food it grows at home while cutting the water its farms use by almost half. That puts greenhouses, smart irrigation, farm solar, and cold chains at the center of the plan. “It’s a very ambitious target,” Leigh Mante, a junior climate and energy fellow at ORF Middle East, tells EnterpriseAM. “At the end of the day, you can’t produce everything within the context of this region. You’ll also still need to import.”

The war exposed how thin the supply chain is: Around 70% of the Gulf’s food imports pass through Hormuz, and the UAE imports 80-90% of its food. Iran, a large supplier to the UAE, banned food and agricultural exports indefinitely. Retailers kept shelves stocked by flying food in and rerouting shipments at a higher cost, and new trucking routes through Oman’s Sohar and Salalah kept cargo moving. Food security climbed the government’s priority list alongside defense and infrastructure.

Emergency fixes came first: In April, ADQ’s Silal expanded its Ensure Essentials program and signed 14 supplier partnerships, and the federal government approved an AED 1 bn fund to localize staples like dairy, poultry, and flour. The crisis “reinvigorated a desire to increase domestic self-sufficiency and domestic production,” Mante says.

The long-term plan sets hard targets for 2040: The Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (Adafsa) wants the emirate to produce 70% of its basic food commodities locally, up from 30% today, and to cut farm water use to 12.7k cbm per hectare a year from 24.7k. It also wants agriculture’s contribution to the economy to grow 3.6x to AED 34.6 bn from AED 9.5 bn, according to the strategy unveiled at the Global Food Security Summit last month.

It covers 25 products across six categories: vegetables, fruits, poultry, red meat, dairy, and fish, Zayed Salem Al Kathiri, acting executive director of Adafsa’s strategy and policy sector, tells EnterpriseAM. They were picked for their share of the local diet, their nutritional value, and how realistic local production is. Grains, rice, and edible oils are out.

Water is the hard limit, and farms are the emirate’s biggest drain on groundwater. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of Abu Dhabi’s groundwater use. Desalination supplies only 18% of farm water, and recycled water less than 1%. For decades, the Gulf met water scarcity by building more supply, mostly desalination plants. Adafsa’s target goes after demand instead, by making farms use less. “Just the fact that they’re looking at cutting water use is a good signal,” Mante says.

Red meat and dairy are the hardest items on the list to localize because both need a lot of water. “The UAE imports a lot of beef from Brazil or Australia, and they tend to produce the less water-intensive products in the country, like fruits and vegetables,” Mante says.

Leaning harder on desalination carries its own risk: In April, Iran threatened to hit desalination plants if the US attacked its power plants. A desalination plant in Bahrain had already been hit earlier in the conflict, and a power and water plant in Kuwait was struck days later, though Iran denied responsibility and blamed Israel, we reported at the time.

Fertilizer came through the strait as well: Granular urea prices rose USD 60 per ton after the strait effectively closed, we reported in March. The UAE and Oman are both exploring green ammonia as a local source. “This crisis has reinvigorated those efforts to expand green ammonia production specifically for fertilizer,” Mante says.

Adafsa is counting on private capital for much of the 3.6x growth. Government spending will shift toward productivity gains and measurable results, and two of the strategy’s 13 programs cover redirecting agricultural subsidies and farm financing, Al Kathiri says. Investors are expected to co-invest in greenhouses, smart irrigation, and farm solar; build and run assets from palm replanting to cold chains; and sign guaranteed offtake agreements for dates, fruits, vegetables, and livestock.

The private share of the AED 34.6 bn is still open. Adafsa has started talks with private-sector players, and investment volumes will be set once each program’s public-private partnership (PPP) structure is final, Al Kathiri says.

Money may chase the most visible assets: Investors will likely favor the technologies that are easiest to sell, Mante says, so the priority should be “making sure that they’re not just investing in the flashy technologies, but also in what’s important, like drought-resistant seeds.” Vertical farms suit high-value fruit and vegetables, but “it’s not very cost-efficient to be producing grain in a vertical farm,” she says. Grains could still grow here with crops bred for heat and salty soil, like the higher-yield, drought- and salt-tolerant wheat developed at Sharjah’s wheat farm.

Seed research needs public money first: Trials take years, and “there’s not going to be an immediate return on investment,” Mante says. “That’s why the public sector needs to come in and do the de-risking, so that the private sector can do the rest.” She also points to crop insurance and agri-guarantees for smallholder farmers, and to shared food hubs that pool research, water, and energy infrastructure.

Even at 70%, Abu Dhabi will still import, so trade routes matter as much as farms. Diversified trading partners and backup routes are “equally as important” as domestic output, Mante tells us. The UAE’s comprehensive economic partnership agreements (CEPAs) could cut delays through faster customs clearance and single-window systems, which matters more when rerouted perishables spend longer in transit, she says.

The supplier list is getting longer: The UAE has a food partnership with India and Africa and is building closer ties with Brazil. “There are partners that they wouldn’t have normally considered before that they’re starting to consider more now,” Mante says.

What’s next: Adafsa’s program-by-program PPP structures will be the first test of how much private money commits and which assets it lands in. Water policy is also on the calendar. GCC states restarted talks on intra-regional water cooperation in August, Mante says, and the UAE co-hosts the UN Water Conference with Senegal at Adnec in Abu Dhabi on 8-10 December, where she expects regional cooperation to come up.