Agriculture

Water has become the number one concern for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In formulating its agricultural policy, the need to limit water usage runs through all its policies. The government has long realised that the drain the agriculture sector has been placing on the country’s finite and limited water resources is unsustainable. In 2009...

The Saudi Agriculture show on the outskirts of Riyadh in September 2012 was testament to the buzz surrounding one of the most interesting agricultural sectors in the Middle East. Investors from Europe and Asia were out in force, promoting everything from irrigation equipment to new animal feeds and fertilisers. It is not hard to understand the...

As Saudi Arabia scales back on domestic agricultural production in key staples such as wheat and alfalfa (for animal fodder), the country is becoming more reliant on food and agricultural imports. In a bid to mitigate the potential impact of international food price volatility, several Saudi companies, supported by government incentives, are...

Since the Saudi government commissioned Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), a sustainable development firm owned by the German government, to build a strategy for developing organic farming in Saudi Arabia in 2005, the subsector has taken an increasingly prominent position in the overall strategy for agriculture. Given...

Alongside the rapid expansion of Jeddah’s area and population in recent decades is a raft of environmental problems, including the spill of both solid and liquid waste. Over the last decades, limited government funding, inadequate planning and low public awareness have combined to pose a serious threat to the city’s environment...