Food security

Read how the Food and Agriculture Entrepreneurs Programme, National Food Security Strategy, Emirates Council for Food Security, the National System for Sustainable Agriculture, UAE Aquaculture Pulse 2020, UAE Food Bank and the federal law to regulate strategic stock of food commodities help achieve food security in the UAE.

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ne’ma – the National Food Loss and Waste initiative

ne’ma – the National Food Loss and Waste initiative aims to promote and align shared actions by key national stakeholders including government, private sector, NGOs and communities to address food loss and waste across the whole value chain, from production to consumption. This will cover farms, producers, distributors, retailers, restaurants and households with the aim to tackle current behaviours and attitudes and to build new national social norms around responsible consumption that contribute to food loss and waste reduction.

The initiative aims to:

  • conduct a national baseline to measure food loss and waste, and identify and target hotspots across the food value chain to develop solutions that can inform the national strategy
  • explore and address the root causes behind the behaviours that drive food loss and waste within the UAE, with a view to influencing the longer-term behavioural changes needed to adopt more responsible consumption by the UAE’s diverse communities
  • enhance the policy landscape, catalyse and pioneer new home-grown innovations and technologies that can contribute to measuring, reducing or incentivising community members to reduce food loss and waste
  • raise community awareness through campaigns on the importance of adopting new positive behaviours to reduce food loss and waste by identifying and scaling-up individual success stories, with the aim of mobilising individuals and local communities to take collective action.

 

ne’ma, which means blessing in Arabic, is a collaboration between Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and Emirates Foundation.

 

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National Food Security Strategy

Read about the National Food Security Strategy on this platform. 

Emirates Council for Food Security

The UAE Cabinet launched the Emirates Council for Food Security (ECSF) to strengthen the efforts of national authorities to achieve food security, as well as for meeting the goals of the National Food Security Strategy.

Members

Minister of State for Food Security chairs the council, membership to which includes representatives from Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Ministry of Energy and Industry, Ministry of Health and Community Protection, Ministry of Education, and National Authority for Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Management.

Scope of work

The scope of the council’s work includes the following:

UAE Aquaculture Pulse 2020

H. E. Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri launched UAE Aquaculture Pulse 2020, a document set to serve as a reference point for evaluating investment opportunities in the local aquaculture sector.

The UAE Aquaculture Pulse 2020 studies consumption patterns in local and international markets, analyses production quality and size as well as prices and availability to support future investments in aquaculture projects in the UAE.

The new document lists the hatcheries available around the country that produce fish fingerlings (juvenile fish) of various types. It showcases the larger fish farms which account for over 90 percent of the current production.

The document explores the demand-supply dynamics for fish products in the UAE as per current estimates. It identifies the species that are most in demand for consumers and provides their average price in the country.

UAE Food Bank

The UAE Food Bank is a charitable organisation, launched in 2017 under the umbrella of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives (MBRGI). It is committed to distributing food to those in need while eliminating food waste by collaborating with local authorities as well as local and international charities to create a comprehensive ecosystem to efficiently store, package and distribute excess fresh food from hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. It is the first food bank in the United Arab Emirates.

The Food Bank initiative aims at:

  • Reducing the amount of food wasted
  • Opening branches of the UAE Food Bank inside and outside the UAE in order to deliver meals to as many underprivileged people as possible
  • Entrenching the values of social responsibility and volunteerism in the moral code of institutions and individuals by initiating sustainable partnerships with food and hospitality sector entities such as restaurants, supermarkets and hotels
  • Solidifying the social value of sustainability and reducing excessive food waste through awareness campaigns.

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Food Tech Challenge

The Food Tech Challenge is a global competition that seeks to develop innovative solutions for food production and management in the UAE. The Global Food Technology Challenge aims to use advanced technologies and efficient tools and techniques to overcome the challenges of the agricultural sector and achieve sustainable food production in the UAE.

The USD 1 million prize money of the challenge will be divided among four winners. A high-level jury consisting of international experts in technology, economy and sustainability will evaluate submissions and select the best projects in terms of efficiency, creativity, and project scalability.

The challenge is in line with the objectives of the National Food Security Strategy, which aims to develop a comprehensive national system based on enabling sustainable food production through the use of modern technologies.

The competition supports the UAE’s commitment to providing its population with sufficient, safe and nutritious food, and invites applicants from all backgrounds to join. University students and early-stage start-ups with prior experience in urban farming are especially encouraged to apply.

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Food Security Research Platform

The Food Security Research Platform is an online portal that allows specialists to share their latest findings and publications across eight promising research themes. It aims to serve the needs of a wide range of stakeholders in terms of data, information and knowledge on research and development in sustainable food systems across the food value chain.

Platform priority themes

  1. Agricultural biotechnology: it is a range of tools, including traditional breeding techniques
  2. Agricultural waste: it involves using soil as sites for the treatment and disposal of organic waste and wastewater
  3. Alternative food: these are healthier alternatives to food that is prepared or produced by conventional methods
  4. Bioenergy and biomaterials: bioenergy is the use of renewable energy produced from biomaterial including natural sources
  5. Chain technology: it is the use of technology to enhance the flow of products and information between supply chain member organisations
  6. Farm IOT: It is the application of modern ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) into agriculture for monitoring the crop field and automating the irrigation system
  7. Novel farming: it is the application of current technologies for the development of new agricultural techniques
  8. Robotics: Emerging applications of robots or drones in agriculture include weed control, cloud seeding, planting seeds, harvesting, environmental monitoring and soil analysis.

Read more about the research priority themes.

Targeting mainly public and private institutions working in the research and development sector, the Food Security Research Platform is a repository of data related to research in food security in the UAE and information on key investors in the food and agriculture sectors.

 The platform serves as a vessel to align research and development with the National Food Security Strategy, which enables the UAE's population to have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food at affordable prices for an active and healthy life.

Ag-Tech Accelerators

To accelerate adoption of technology in agriculture, the Office of Food Security in cooperation with the Government Accelerators program launched 10 initiatives. They are:

  1. Emirates Sustainable Agriculture Label
  2. Framework of Agriculture Finance
  3. Ag-Tech Loan Guarantee & Supply Chain Financing
  4. Ag-Tech Building Code
  5. Unified Agriculture License
  6. Food Security Data Framework
  7. Food Security Data Platform
  8. Aquaculture Standards
  9. Fish Feed Facility
  10. Aquaculture Atlas.

The UAE in the Global Food Security Index

The UAE was ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and 23rd globally on the Global Food Security Index – GFSI 2022.

The annual GFSI records and measures year-on-year changes in the structural factors that affect food security. Factors include food cost, availability, quality and safety, as well as natural resources and resilience across 113 nations.

It is based on 58 indicators that measure the drivers of food security in developing and developed countries.

‘We the UAE 2031’ vision aims to position the UAE as one of the top 10 countries in the GFSI.

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Importing livestock and their products into the UAE

You can import live animals and animal products from the countries that the UAE has approved. Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MoCCaE) has a search engine which indicates the countries approved to import live animals from and the import status of each type of animal. Import authorisation is subject to change according to the development of the global epidemiological situation and the animal health conditions in the exporting countries, based on the reports of the World Organization for Animal Health.

Read about animal development and health in the UAE.

Updated on:

06 May 2026

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