Scoring a win in Qatar
Chinese agricultural tech, irrigation systems contribute to Gulf nation’s success as World Cup host
The curtain has come down on the 2022 FIFA World Cup but there are still some things from China at the global football extravaganza that remain a source of interest, even though the Chinese national team did not qualify.
From stadiums and brand marketing to cultural derivatives, Chinese products were like stars in the sky, visible throughout the quadrennial football competition, like the Chinesebuilt Lusail Stadium and Chinesemade electric buses.
Among these were also lettuce and rape grown on the Alfardan family farm with the help of Chinese agricultural technology. And players and football fans from all over the world perhaps ate vegetables “grown by China”.
Agriculture is difficult in Qatar due to the scarcity of water and limited arable land. The country relies heavily on imports for vegetables, meat and other agricultural products.
The Alfardan family farm, located north of the capital Doha, is an oasis in the desert.
The Alfardans set up a family farm, the Wahat Al Shafalahia, in 1975 to sell sustainably-farmed homegrown produce, with the vision of propelling Qatar to the top of the region’s agricultural industry.
It is now making use of cuttingedge agricultural technology from the Institute of Urban Agriculture, or IUA, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and was responsible for growing vegetables for the participating World Cup teams.
The IUA has been running agricultural technical assistance projects and providing technical support to Qatari agricultural companies since the end of 2019, during which time it has trained many technical personnel.
All these measures have helped Qatari farms improve planting techniques, increase yields, and reduce costs, according to experts from the IUA.
Two key technologies play important roles in growing quality vegetables. One is solid active fiber soil and the other is smart LED plant factory technology.
The IUA has helped improve vegetable cultivation in Qatar through the combination of hydroponics — growing plants in a water-based nutrient solution — and solid active fiber soil technique, or the Leitu technique, said Qi Zhiyong, the founder of the technique.
According to Qi, who is a researcher with the IUA, solid active fiber soil is a replacement for soil and is mainly made from agricultural and forestry waste like straw and cotton stalks.
“The Leitu technique has significantly expanded the variety of vegetables that can be grown in Qatar, increased the density of planting, and reduced the difficulty in controlling the environment, thus ensuring high yields with low energy consumption,” he said.
Vegetables grown using the technique include eggplants, tomatoes, and cucumbers while leafy vegetables are usually hydroponically grown, he added.
IUA experts said that Qatar has also introduced smart, low-energy LED lighting which produces high light efficiency.
In the fully enclosed “magic plant factory”, the growth of vegetables, fruits and other plants is no longer limited by the external natural environment. The sunlight and soil required are artificially configured and precisely controlled.
“Different plants need different types of light to grow. We have developed special LED light formulas for different vegetables as well as the equipment to grow them,” said Yang Qichang, executive director general of the IUA.
The color and intensity of light can be adjusted to meet the particular photosynthesis needs of vegetables, Yang said.
The integrated system is also equipped with air conditioners, sensors, and nutrient solution supply systems to regulate temperature, humidity, and nutrition, so that vegetables can thrive, Yang added.
According to the IUA, local businesses supported by them have built several container-style vegetable planting centers in Qatar, which grow vegetables even as outside temperatures are as high as 53 to 55 degrees Celsius.
Qatar has a strong interest in economic diversification, and is especially interested in producing food locally, marking a shift in its dependence on imports.
The country launched its National Food Security Strategy (2018-23) with the aim of increasing vegetable production by setting up a hydroponics greenhouse cluster that will produce 70 percent of its vegetables.
Fardan Fahad Alfardan, founder of the Alfardan family farm, told Xinhua News Agency in 2021 that he believes that in order to achieve the 70 percent goal, Qatar should not only increase investment in agriculture but also speed up the introduction of hightech and comprehensive agricultural technology.
He lauded China’s advanced hightech agricultural technology, saying it delivered pronounced economic benefits and would play a huge role in the implementation of Qatar’s National Food Security Strategy.
He said the Alfardan family farm mainly produces seasonal vegetables using high-tech growing technologies all imported from China, and that the farm will expand production by leveraging China’s sophisticated agricultural technologies.
“In the beginning, we were only growing produce for our friends and family, and then neighbors. And now we want to share our produce with the rest of Qatar. But to do that, we need to find a partner with technology capable of growing the best products all year round. And for that, we
found a very good Chinese partner,” Alfardan told Xinhua.
“It only takes two hours for our leaf vegetables to be taken to market from the farm so our produce is much fresher compared to imported produce which can take at least five days,” said Gao Yuntao, a person Alfardan described as his “good Chinese partner”.
Gao, who comes from Chongqing municipality and has been in Qatar for 10 years, was interviewed by Chinese media outlets during the World Cup.
“We grow high-quality produce at very competitive prices”, said Gao, who is also the general manager of the smart LED plant factory on the Alfardan family farm.
According to Gao, the farm adopted China’s world-leading smart LED plant factory technology and makes use of shipping containers abandoned in the desert around the deep-water port of Doha, which is reconfigured and equipped with cooling and heat preservation systems.
Vegetables are not planted in the ground, but grow without soil in multilayered containers, each layer equipped with pipes that provide nutrient solutions.
Compared to traditional agriculture, Gao said the technology is more efficient, more resistant to heat and pests and also makes more efficient use of water and fertilizer.
Vegetables grown on the farm have made their way to five-star hotels, Chinese restaurants and high-end supermarkets in Qatar, Gao said.
“They have been tested by the Qatari national authorities and comply with European Union standards,” he added.
Gao started to grow vegetables in Qatar four years ago with teammate, Ling Yuhao. They mainly planted rape and lettuce at first.
He said that Spanish teams had worked on growing vegetables in Qatar in 1974 but had not succeeded, and even Qataris thought it was impossible to grow vegetables in the desert. However, they were able to succeed with the help of new Chinese technology.
Gao’s factory has expanded from growing lettuce and rape to some 30 varieties of vegetables, including peppers, cabbage, spinach, and celery.
“We will expand production next year and increase the number of containers from 60 to 200,” Gao said, adding that he hopes more Chinese companies will come to Qatar and join forces in development.
In addition to vegetables, many other Chinese agricultural technologies helped make the World Cup a success.
For instance, technical support for the irrigation and maintenance of the football pitches was provided by China’s Ningxia University.
Developed over the last 11 years, the university’s underground infiltration irrigation system that was used in stadiums differs from drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation, which are both aboveground operations.
It can apply water and fertilizer directly to the roots of the grass, reducing the loss of water through evaporation by more than 34 percent compared to drip irrigation technology.
China and Qatar have expanded areas of cooperation from traditional fields like energy and infrastructure to high-tech industries, said China’s ambassador to Qatar, Zhou Jian.
The fruitful cooperation has improved economic and trade linkages between the two countries and boosted the diversified growth of Qatar’s economy, Zhou added.
Liu Zhiyi, a researcher at the Foreign Economic Cooperation Center at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, told Farmers’ Daily that agricultural diplomacy leads to mutual benefit and promotes people-to-people connectivity.
China brings capital, technology, agricultural equipment and experience to other developing countries, while the latter increase employment and improve the supply of agricultural produce, Liu added.
The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China stressed the promotion of high-standard opening up, of which international cooperation in agricultural and rural areas is an integral part, said Xie Chaoping, an associate professor at Nanjing Agricultural University.
Chinese agriculture “going global” has led to a significant improvement in China’s science and technology, Xie said, adding that international cooperation helps shorten agricultural technology research and development by 10 to 15 years on average, saving 30 percent to 50 percent on R&D funds.