United Arab Emirates Agriculture Profile 2012

The agriculture, livestock and fisheries area is one of the main sources which the Government of Abu Dhabi focuses on increasing, in order to accomplish food security; and to elevate its contribution to GDP. However, this contribution has decreased constantly during the period (2004 2008), as it dropped from 2.4% in 2004 to 0.8% in 2008, but it moved up to more than 1% of GDP in 2009, according to the Annual Economic Report on Commodity Activities issued by the Department of Economic Development in Abu Dhabi.
The Livestock and Fisheries is actively working to promote agriculture, through a plan which aims at providing new sources of irrigation, dissemination of modern irrigation systems, and establishment of agricultural research centres, to amplify sector contribution to GDP, and support the sector's role in achieving food security through domestic production.
There is no hesitation that agriculture plays an important role in the stability of food prices in the domestic markets; as inadequate agricultural production makes the emirate vulnerable to fluctuations in food prices in global markets; and consequently impinges on inflation rates a result of depending on importing from abroad. The relative importance of food, beverages and tobacco amounted to about 16% of the total consumer basket in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in 2009; and consequently, the low-income groups would be affected by increases in prices of food commodities, in contrast to high-income groups. This is attributed to the high proportion of spending on food commodities, where expenditure on food commodities relative to income, amounted to 28.7% for low-income groups, compared to about 14.8% for the high-income groups, according to the income and household expenditure survey, conducted in 2007/2008.
Key Indicators of Agriculture: Cultivated area in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi registered a minimal decreased in 2009. On the average the decrease was less than 0.1% during the period (2005-2009), while the average annual rate of increase in the number of farms amounted to 0.4% during the same period, as shown in the table (25). The reason for this disparity was that, some farms which stopped production were still counted in total number of farms.
Despite the reduce in cultivated area, the quantity of the vegetables produced increased by 26% on average during the period (2005- 2009). Production went up from 494,000 tons in 2005 to 1.25 million tons in 2009. This reveals an increase in productivity per acre. The UAE has succeeded in exporting fruits and vegetables to the markets of the United States and UK, and exporting dates to Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia, in addition to exporting natural flowers to GCC countries, Lebanon, UK, Australia and Japan. Animal and fish production increased during 2009 compared to 2008.
Poultry and meat production went up by 2.6% while eggs production rose by 4.6% during the same year. This rise was the result of the emirate's efforts, to enhance production and combat diseases that wracked the world, such as avian flu.
Fish and sea food products present rich sources of food, nutrition, and protein. Demand for fish products, hiked up with the continuing rise in population; prompting the development of fisheries and fishing activities. Production of fish, molluscs and crustaceans went up from 5,363 thousand tons in 2008 to 5,977 thousand tons in 2009 increasing by 2.8%.
Value Added: The value of production in the agriculture, livestock and fisheries activity fell by 0.4% in 2009 compared to 2008. This was followed by a minimal drop of 0.3% in the value added in agriculture, livestock and fisheries activity in 2009. It is worth mentioning that value added in agriculture, livestock and fisheries activity, had gone down at the rate of 1.8 % on average during the period (2004-2009).
Gross Fixed Capital Formation: Gross fixed capital formation in the activity of agriculture, livestock and fishery increased from AED 616 million in 2008 to Dh620 million in 2009, growing at an annual rate of 0.6%, equivalent to twice the growth rate during 2008. This demonstrates that there was an improvement in investment flow in the activity of agriculture, livestock and fishery in 2009, although the period (2004-2009) had witnessed a decline in fixed capital formation in the activity, at an annual rate of 3.3% on average.