Sixty years after its beginning, the bilateral collaboration between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and FAO proves to be a successful model to boost sustainable agriculture development while preserving natural resources.

“Our longstanding collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia represents an actual model of cooperation” says Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, FAO Assistant Director General and Representative for the Near East and North Africa during the opening ceremony of the Agricultural Week that took place in Cairo and came to a conclusion on 10 April.

"Our partnership clearly shows that when FAO expertise and knowledge meet the steady commitment of a Member State, comprehensive and sustainable models of agriculture and rural development can be established” he added.

The Cooperation with the Kingdom started in 1950, but it was only in 1982 that it took a quantum leap, thanks to the signature of a Unilateral Trust Fund Agreement. The Agreement, that since then has been renewed every five years, has given life to the largest program that the FAO is carrying out in partnership with a Member State at global level.

“The last agreement, signed in 2011 for the duration of five years with a total budget of US$ 67 million, includes a diversity of projects that support the long term vision of the Kingdom to turn the agriculture industry into a modern sector that substantially contributes to the GDP of the country” said Oihabi Abdallah, program coordinator in Saudi Arabia.

The huge agricultural investments carried out by the Kingdom have actually, increased the gross value of agricultural production, boosting the agricultural productivity of main crops. The GDP of the agricultural sector rose from 6.3 billion riyals in 1981 to 49.9 billion riyals in 2012.

“Now efforts have to be focused on how to scale-up the model created by the partnership, ensuring that natural resources, especially water, are sustainably managed and conserved” said Mr. Khaled al Fuhaid, Deputy Minister for Agricultural Affairs of Saudi Arabia and head of the Saudi Delegation in Cairo.

Like the previous one, the current Agreement mainly focuses on raising the efficiency of crop production of the Kingdom while reducing water consumption.

“The drop in agricultural water consumption from 19.8 billion cubic meters in 2005 to 14 billion cubic meters in 2011, is a clear indicator of our success” Mr. Al Fouhaid adds. Modern irrigation technologies; integrated farming systems; selection of crops that don’t consume much water and have a high comparative advantage for the Kingdom; application of crop rotation to decrease water consumption; and, use of treated waste water to reduce depletion of groundwater, are all methodologies FAO successfully introduced to the Saudi farming system.

“Successes reached so far need to be capitalized upon. Intensifying agriculture is not difficult, doing it in a sustainable manner is a challenge. We hope that the cooperation with FAO will support us in continuing to achieve important goals such as reducing water consumption to 5.5 billion cubic meters by 2030”. Said Bandar Al-Otaibi said the Director General of the Saudi National Center for Research on Agriculture and Livestock.

Recommendations from the meeting concerned ways to further improve program performance and strategies to link it to the three regional initiatives that were approved during last Regional Conference for the Near East last February.

The event was organized by the FAO Regional Office for Near East and North Africa and was attended by a delegation of high officials from the Saudi Ministry of Agriculture and some 150 partners including the League of the Arab States, Embassies from the Near East Region, donors, UN agencies and media.