MME announces investment projects to produce vegetables in greenhouses

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) announced 34 new agricultural strategic investment projects for vegetable production using the technology of greenhouses.

The project will be carried out in phases, and an area of about 100,000 square meters will be allocated for each project.

The aim of these projects is to promote fresh vegetable production in order to achieve the highest possible level of self-sufficiency, and in line with the objectives and policies of the technical committee to stimulate and involve the private sector in economic development projects aimed at activating and motivating it to contribute to food security projects of the State.

In the first phase of the projects, the MME launched technical bids for 10 of them to produce vegetables in greenhouses with a total area of 1mn square meters, as well as bids for the implementation of four agricultural projects for the production of green fodder with treated sewage.

The offering of these projects through the technical bidding system only means that selection will be from the best 10 applicants to receive licence for 25 years without any financial bidding for the licences of these projects.

It is expected that the production from one fresh vegetable project will reach about 2,100tonnes, and the total production from the ten projects will be around 21,000tonnes annually, which means that the contribution of the projects offered would increase the local vegetable production by about 35%. According to the MME, the strategic projects for vegetable production in greenhouses will be 72,000 tonnes per year, which would lead to a significant shift in the production of vegetables.

It is expected that the vegetable production in Qatar through strategic projects alone, will reach about 132,000tonnes per year, which increases the self-sufficiency of fresh vegetables to about 50%. This is expected to increase to 65% in light of current expansions in existing farms and support extended to them from the State represented by the MME.

It should be noted that the MME has put in place many technical controls for such projects, the most important of which is to provide fresh vegetables to the Qatari market throughout the year and the need to adopt modern technologies of cooling greenhouses that are capable of producing high quality vegetables during the summer months, along with the provision of water supply. The projects mainly focus on the use of soilless farming technology as one of the most important global water-saving and productivity-enhancing technologies.

This system saves about 70% of irrigation water, and has many other important advantages in terms of raising the quality of production.

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment, in co-ordination with the technical committee for the encouragement and participation of the private sector in economic development projects launched a technical tender for the private sector to submit bids on establishing four agricultural projects to produce nearly 13,500 tonnes of fodder using treated wastewater, with a production rate of 20 tonnes per hectare per year.

Despite the unjust siege imposed on Qatar, the vegetable production sector achieved a clear leap with using modern technology to produce such as protected cultivation for improving water-use efficiency and increasing agricultural productivity, which is the most important technology for producing vegetables suitable for the Qatari environment.

Cooling greenhouses have increased from 471 houses with a total area of about 497,000 square meters during the 2016/2017 season to 919 cooling greenhouses with a total area of nearly 729,000 square meters in 2017/2018 season, registering an increase of 10%. This clearly affects the increase in vegetable production during the season which exceeded the 60,000tonnes, contributing to increasing self sufficiency from 14%, before the siege, to 22% currently.