Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture Eng. Abdulrahman Al-Fadley has stressed the importance of joining international efforts to face challenges of the food security crisis in the world due to the current situation that requires enhancing multilateral international cooperation to increase food production and provide immediate aid to alleviate the severity of the crisis in needy countries. Eng. Al-Fadley made the remarks while participating in the meeting of ministers of agriculture at G20, which is hosted by Indonesia between September 27 and 29 in Bali. The minister noted that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with its partners in institutions of the Arab Coordination Group, has launched an action plan for food security with an initial fund of $10 billion in response to the global crisis of food supplies and to guarantee the availability of food and ability to afford its costs by all. He noted that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has realized a historical growth in the agricultural sector by more than 7.8% this year compared with last year, and succeeded in reducing the amount of agricultural water by more than 40% as a result of adopting several policies. Eng. Al-Fadley called for setting meaningful investment programs in rural areas and focusing on education, technology and spreading knowledge to provide opportunities for the youth and women, realize the sustainable development and have flexible food systems, highlighting the importance of following research, technology and innovation tools to provide affordable solutions, noting that digital agriculture provides new opportunities for government to increase the levels of efficiency of applicable policies and programs and change agricultural methods through helping farmers work accurately, effectively and sustainably. He also referred to the importance of agricultural inputs to the sustainable agriculture, pointing out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is considered a main producer of chemical fertilizers and will continue to play its role in supporting the stability of fertilizers supply chains to ensure the sustainability of food production, adding that misuse of fertilizers negatively affects ecosystems, which can be avoided through innovative technologies that provide accurate methods to improve the efficiency of their use. The minister also reviewed the experience of the ministry in automating its services through launching Nama portal to offer unified electronic government services for individuals and the business sector, where the portal provides more than 260 e-services for the ministry's system, in addition to its success in automating the dates sector from production to consumption, which contributed to expanding the possibilities of selling dates through local and international online trade.
