Abu Dhabi puts local produce to the fore across major stores

ABU DHABI / WAM

Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (Adafsa) has directed major stores in Abu Dhabi to dedicate prominent spaces to display local agri-products, under the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Presidential Affairs, and Chairman of Adafsa.
The move, taken in coordination with Adafsa’s strategic partners from various government entities, aims at emphasising the importance of local produce in meeting the market needs and enhancing its competitiveness in the emirate and the country’s markets. It comes within Adafsa’s efforts to ensure self-sufficiency in local fresh products and utilise local natural resources in supporting competitiveness and achieving sustainability.
Adafsa affirmed that several outlets in the emirate of Abu Dhabi have started to allocate spaces for displaying local products. Expressions of pride in national production and local product logos adorned dozens of Abu Dhabi’s markets. These displayed hundreds of tonnes of vegetables, fruits, dates, meat, fish, dairy products, eggs and honey produced in the emirate’s farms.
In this regard, Saeed Al Bahri Salem Al Ameri, Director General of Adafsa, said: “Sheikh Mansour’s directives translate the great attention paid by our wise leadership to promote sustainable agricultural development. These directives enhance food security system and affirm the importance of local production in establishing a diversified and sustainable national economy based on knowledge, innovation and technology. This would be realised by achieving comprehensive development in all sectors, including the agricultural one, due to its importance in achieving food security and social well-being by enabling customers’ access to fresh and high-quality local food products at all times while ensuring the highest food safety standards.”
Al Ameri praised the constant follow-up of HH Sheikh Mansour of Adafsa’s plans and programs, through which the authority seeks to promote the concept of sustainable agricultural development, ensure natural resources sustainability, apply best international practices and standards, and optimize partnership with the private sector to expand strategic projects of relevance to food, biosecurity and agricultural sustainability.
In addition to offering logistics services to local farmers and livestock breeders, to help market their various products and increase returns, Adafsa provides guidance to farm owners and workers, and encourages them apply the best practices to improve production operations, Al Ameri noted.
He commended the great cooperation Adafsa’s partners in the private sector who responded rapidly to the directives by allocating spaces for displaying local products. Al Ameri further stressed the close and exceptional ties bringing together the public and private sectors are the UAE’s comprehensive and economic development engine, indicating they highlight the joint cooperation to uphold the public interest and keep the UAE’s march of growth, prosperity and development in various sectors going.
Earlier, Adafsa launched the first brand for local products under the name “Local Harvest”, to promote local products, encourage consumers to buy such products, and foster their position in the market. Adafsa succeeded in concluding hundreds of procurement contracts with local farms producing thousands of tons of vegetables and fruits annually. Moreover, Adafsa is marketing these products in its Local Harvest outlets, hypermarkets and the emirate’s cooperative societies.