French firms keen to share farm expertise with Qatar

French companies are ready to share their expertise with Qatar in thefield of agriculture and aquaculture to help the country attainself-sufficiency, a senior official of Business France has said.Business France, the national agency supporting the internationaldevelopment of the French economy, helps French companies to develop partnerships abroad. “We have a lot of technologies and solutions which have been tested inFrance, we can offer a lot to Qatar to develop the production ofdifferent kind of products in the field of technologies in vegetable andfruit production and fish farming (aquaculture), among others,”Business France’s Middle East managing director Marc Cagnard said.“We are experts in green houses and several other new technologies infarming, and we want to bring some new technology with a lot ofoptimisation of existing solutions,” he noted.Cagnard was speaking on the sidelines of the ‘French Technologies inAgriculture’ seminar in Doha yesterday, which brought a delegation of 13French companies specialised in agriculture and aquaculture.The event explored new opportunities of partnerships and transfer oftechnologies between French companies and Qatar in agriculture.Ministry of Municipality and Environment’s (MME) agricultural researchdepartment director Massoud al-Marri, Aquaculture Department headMohammed al-Abdulla, local farm owners and guests took part in theseminar.The seminar saw French companies presenting their know-how, experienceand the kind of products or services they can develop with Qatar torespond to the latter’s needs for self-sufficiency.French agribusiness experts are specialised in new concept of fruits andvegetable production, from greenhouses to urban farms (AquaponieValley, Barre, CMF Florentaises, FUL, Refarmers), monitoring theproliferation of infectious diseases (Octopus Robots), organic-mineralfertilisers (OvinAlp) and alternatives to agricultural additives basedon algae (Olmix Group).  PFI Nouvelles Vagues and Tarbouriech presented their experience inaquaculture and fisheries while Allice tackled reproduction physiologyand animal genetic selection. Another company, Agrosolutions, gathers experts and consultants ininnovative and sustainable solutions for agriculture, environment,territories management and food industries while Cesbron deals withsystems for industrial processes such as refrigeration, air treatmentand energy controls. “France has a lot to offer in the field of agriculture and sustainabledevelopment. After hosting the COP21 and the One Planet Summit, Frenchecosystem is focused on innovations to produce food while protecting theenvironment,” Business France Qatar head Christelle Peyran said in astatement.“We are the third European producer of fruits and vegetables. We havedeveloped new concepts of urban farming or aquaponics,” she added.According to Business France Qatar, France is the first agriculturalproducer in Europe and has more than 19mn cattle, more than any othercountry and has 34% of all bovine livestock raised for meat in Europe. France’s fishing industry – from boat to consumer – is ranked fourthamong sea fisheries in Europe with 9% of community catches; continentalFrance has 63 fishing ports, 38 fish markets, 12 producers’organisations and 608 wholesale and processing companies. France produces 9mn tonnes (mt) of fruit and vegetables and 5.3mt of ware potatoes in a total area of 550,000 hectares.  “The government of Qatar launched several initiatives to support localproduction such as a proactive food safety programme ‘Qatar NationalFood Security Programme’ aiming to develop the agriculture market andensure food self-efficiency by 2023, Peyran said.