Abu Dhabi wants to more than double food self-sufficiency by 2040

Abu Dhabi wants to produce 70% of its basic food commodities at home by 2040, more than double the 30% it manages today. The target is part of a new Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA) strategy unveiled yesterday at the opening of the Global Food Security Summit. The strategy is built on five pillars and 13 programs, ADAFSA Director General Tareq Al Ameri said.

The emirate plans to grow more on far less water. The strategy targets cutting farm water use to 12.7k cbm per hectare per year from 24.7k. At the same time, it aims to lift agriculture’s contribution to Abu Dhabi’s economy 3.6x to AED 34.6 bn, up from AED 9.5 bn. Both targets have the same 2040 deadline.

Why now: The war — and Strait of Hormuz disruptions — has already pushed food security up the agenda this year, with ADQ’s Silal at the center of the effort. In April, Silal expanded its Ensure Essentials initiative, a portfolio of more than 350 products across nine essential categories — including staples like oil, rice, and flour — meant to keep supply flowing and prices stable. It runs alongside Project Resilience, ADQ’s program for managing national emergency food stocks. The same month, Silal signed 14 partnerships with suppliers including Agthia, Al Dahra, Al Ghurair Foods, and Nestlé in a bid to diversify supply chains and build up the UAE’s strategic food reserves, and in May, ADAFSA launched a program to link the emirate’s more than 25k farms to food manufacturers.

Our take: Getting from 30% to 70% on half the water will take serious private investment in farming, processing, and agri-tech, and that agri-tech will have to make money in one of the world’s most water-scarce markets.

What’s next: ADAFSA hasn’t yet published the details behind its 13 programs, including which commodities count as “basic,” what the strategy will cost, and how much of the AED 34.6 bn is expected from private capital.

BACKGROUND- The new strategy lands six months after the federal government approved an AED 1 bn national fund to localize vital industries and shore up supply chains during the war. The fund’s first phase targets everyday staples that can be produced locally at scale: bottled water, dairy, eggs, poultry, bread, flour, vegetable oils, and seasonal vegetables. The broader goal is to fully localize more than 5k vital products. Imports still make up roughly 80-90% of the UAE’s food supply, and officials have had to reassure markets that the country holds sufficient strategic food reserves earlier in the war.

In Abu Dhabi specifically: ADQ set up Silal in 2020 to diversify Abu Dhabi’s food sources and boost local production. Since then it has built one of the UAE’s largest food distribution hubs at Kezad. It has also leaned heavily on agri-tech, mostly through its Innovation Oasis R&D center in Al Ain. It has also worked on:

• Indoor berry and controlled-environment farms with Kezad;
• A desert farming program with Bayer running to 2028;
• A crop genomics center with Limagrain;
• A climate-smart farming tie-up with US farmtech firm Square Roots.