Sultanate working hard to achieve food security
“Food security is a very important concern for a country like Oman,” said Salim Al Abdali, head of the organising committee for the conference, titled Investment Prospects in Food Security:
Opportunities and Challenges. “We will be discussing the challenges and issues that we face and what needs to be done to address them.
“A lot of organisations are involved in this, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Oman Food Investment Company, Sultan Qaboos University, and even the Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Develop- ment,” he added. “Many private and public bodies from Oman and the rest of the world also took part in it.”
Dr Mohanad Hassan, operations manager of Mawashi Oman, which imported the sheep, talked about the sheer scale of the operations.
“We have a plan for breeding and trading these sheep, but until now we have not begun breeding just yet,” he told Times of Oman.
“This first batch was just to test the market and we have a plan to import and breed these sheep here. We are working on it at the moment.
“Right now, we are selling the sheep through vendors and they sell them to the public,” added Hassan. “We have chosen these high quality sheep because we have competitors in Oman. If we need to enter the market, we need to have good quality sheep. We have brought one-year-old merinos and they are of the best quality.”
Engaged in the rearing and sale of sheep in Oman, Mawashi operates a 630,000 square-metre farm in Abeyat, Barka, which is fully capable of handling up to 80,000 livestock, having been certified by the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System from Australia.
A similar mode of testing the waters is being followed with the shipment of fish received by Oman as well.
In a first for the Turkish company, Kilic Holding flew their juvenile sea bream fish into Oman, as Oman looks to see how these fish will fare in the nation in the longterm. Dr. Adel Gindy is the department head of fisheries and marine science at A’Sharqiyah University, and holds a PhD in aquaculture from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
“These fish are juvenile, small fish, which is for a new project of marine cage farming in Oman,” explained Gindy.“This is a very ad- vanced technology being used, and this is the first stage of a huge project. There are unfortunately no juvenile hatcheries in Oman and they are constructing one at the moment, otherwise you will not be able to get the numbers needed for produce.”
While the Sultanate is working towards sustainability, this will take some time.“This will also help Oman’s economy expand the capabilities of exportation of big fish,” explained Gindy.“Fish and shrimp farming is a huge industry. It is not a simple method because the techniques used are quite sophisticated. “In Oman, attempts have also been made at shrimp farming for very long,” he added.“The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries conducted an experiment in 1995. A lot of surveys were done into availability of shrimp in natural conditions. There is also talk about two or three projects starting very soon.”
Namaa Poultry, also run by OFIC, will be spearheading the construction of 250 poultry farms which will house 60 million hens.
Around 70 million eggs, which will then hatch into chickens, are being imported from Europe and India, to allow Oman to achieve self-sustainability in the future.