The MAFRA has been striving to expand market access for K-smart farms
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) of the Republic of Korea and the Ministry of Municipality (MM) of the State of Qatar held the second meeting of the ROK-Qatar Smart Farm Cooperation Committee in the Rural Development Administration (RDA), South Korea.
The ROK-Qatar Smart Farm Cooperation Committee is a director general-level working committee, operated based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on smart farm cooperation amended and signed between the two countries in October 2023. The Republic of Korea and the State of Qatar have been expanding cooperation in the field of smart farming since the first meeting of the Committee was held in Doha in February 2024. Recently in 2024, Qatar’s economic working group visited Korean smart-farm exporting companies to see smart farming technologies. Both sides also carried out the verification and validation of Korean machinery and equipment to see whether they can fulfil their intended purpose under Qatar’s desert climate.
The Korean delegation to the Committee is headed by Director-General KIM Jung-wook of the Agri-Food Innovation Policy Bureau, and the Qatari delegation is headed by Director Masoud Jarallah Al Marri of the Food Security Department.
The committee discussed the following issues at the meeting:
(a) Qatar’s agricultural policies, including the National Food Security Strategy 2030
(b) ways for investment cooperation to build a Korean model of smart farm innovation industrial complex in Qatar
(c) a plan to extend the period of verification and validation of Korean agricultural machinery and equipment to see whether they can withstand Qatar’s severely hot weather.
The MAFRA has been striving to expand market access for K-smart farms. As a result, the MAFRA has been constructing Demo Smart Farms across the Middle East, and has started construction in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, MAFRA established trade offices to support smart farm export in three regions – the Middle East, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and Oceania – and has been assisting smart farm consortias in winning overseas orders for smart farms.
Director-General KIM Jung Wook of the MAFRA’s Agri-food Innovation Policy Bureau said: “Recently, the trade and cooperation between the Republic of Korea and the State of Qatar are gaining more momentum. We will continue to make efforts to ensure that Korean smart farm technologies can be more widely adopted in the Middle East, including Qatar. We strongly hope that cooperation between the two countries in terms of smart farming will advance to the next level.”
