Qatar will turn 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) of its own land into farms under a master plan in order to boost its own food security and achieve self-sufficiency using the most modern technological advances to feed its booming population. Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, issued a decree calling for a master plan to be ready by 2013 and for full food security to be reached within a decade. As a first step, Qatar plans to set up 1,400 farms, according to Fahd Bin Mohammed Al-Attiyah, chairman of Qatar National Food Security Program. He said these will use the latest agricultural technology and train more people to work in the agricultural sector to improve productivity. "This decree is an important message that demonstrates Qatar's willingness to overcome one of its main challenges," Al-Attiyah said. Pedro Berliner, an expert in dryland agriculture and director of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, said this was feasible, but at a huge cost. "You could grow wheat in a greenhouse, but it would cost about five times what you'd pay on the market." Currently, only 1.6 percent of Qatar is arable land and agriculture only contributes 0.1 percent to gross national product, according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Al-Attiyah noted that existing farms were working at only 10 percent of their capacity since it suffered from a lack of qualified staff and water shortages. At the moment, Qatar can only produce about 10 percent of its food needs. Greenhouses are a rarity at the moment and they exist only about 1 percent of cultivated land, FAO said. The World Bank said earlier that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states import some 90 percent of the food they need to feed their 40 million-strong population at a cost in 2010 of $25.8 billon. Qatar itself imports some $1.3 billion in food annually.
