The Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA) outlined the emirate’s Agricultural Transformation Strategy at a partners forum on 8 October. Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported that the plan aims to improve productivity, food security and environmental sustainability by 2040. Its “grow more with less” principle treats farming, livestock, logistics, processing and market access as parts of one value chain. The authority describes the strategy as a roadmap for food security and more resilient farms. The figures released are future goals, not evidence that the stated changes have already occurred.

The strategy calls for agriculture’s contribution to gross domestic product to rise from AED9.5 billion to AED34.6 billion. WAM describes this as a 264% increase, but the report does not identify the reference year or price basis for the AED9.5 billion comparison amount. The two figures therefore cannot be read as a measured growth series or as a real-output comparison. A second goal is to raise self-sufficiency in essential food products from 30% to 70% by 2040. That ratio describes the local share of needs for the products covered; the report provides neither product-level targets nor current import volumes. Reaching the goal would not mean that all food imports cease.

The resource-efficiency target is to reduce irrigation use from 24,700 to 12,700 cubic metres per hectare, which ADAFSA describes as a reduction of about 49%. This is an irrigation-intensity measure per hectare, not total water consumption across the emirate or output per unit of water. The announcement does not specify the baseline period, how changes in crop mix will be handled, or how the indicator will be audited. The strategy also aims for advanced agricultural technologies to be used on 70% of farms and for 75% of farms to have access to capital. Those are adoption and access goals; they do not promise a particular technology, loan amount or increase in farm yields.

ADAFSA said implementation will run through 13 flagship programmes, spanning infrastructure and production inputs through manufacturing, logistics, trade and consumption. More than 180 public and private partners attended the forum. WAM listed 46 federal and local entities, 25 private agricultural companies or organisations, 20 semi-government bodies and 14 academic, research or international entities among them. Attendance does not establish that programmes have budgets or delivery schedules. The announcement gives no interim milestones, total financing, product-level self-sufficiency measures or method for verifying water savings. Those details, alongside regular and comparable outcome data, will determine whether progress can be assessed.