UAE: NGO FairSquare analyses COP28's food & agriculture image amid allegations of food scarcity for migrant workers & other rights abuses in agri-food sector
You feel like cattle sometime. They drive you to work, they drive you back to your bed and they give you just enough to keep going. And suddenly when they can no longer take care of the basics, we are helpless. I basically did not eat for a few days. I just had water and some bread that I ate. It had fungus on it so I cut around it because I had no energy left in me at all and I needed some energy. And then some people came with donation,” says a construction worker who experienced being ‘abandoned’ by the company he had been working for, for over a decade.Migrant construction worker, UAE
In December 2023, the NGO FairSquare released a report, titled ‘Harvesting Disparity: Climate Change, Food and Water Security, and Migrants of the UAE’, exploring the impact of extreme climate conditions and the impact of policies aimed at mitigating food and water security issues.
The report has a number of key findings, including that land acquisition for agriculture goes beyond domestic needs, exacerbating local shortages but also shaping international trade relationships; the country has one of the largest food waste issues globally amid an ‘abundance of food’, yet low-income migrants experience food insecurity; and that the country has one of the highest water scarcity levels globally, and efforts to increase water production involve technology that have incompletely understood impacts.
The report begins by exploring national food security in the country. It goes on to analyse the consequences of UAE ‘land-grabbing’ in vulnerable nations and of exporting food produced on the foreign owned land back to the UAE. Issues include the displacement of indigenous communities, the exploitation of local farmers, and the exacerbation of food shortages in the host country. The report notes in Sudan, for example, IHC Food Holding, DAL Group, and Amtaar Investment (joint venture between Jenaan of Abu Dhabi and the Sudanees government) all have been involved in agricultural cultivation in Sudan.
The report also discusses investments in domestic production, including ag-tech projects such as ECO1 (the world’s largest vertical farm), providing food for Emirates and other airlines and hospitality groups, Pure Harvest Smart Farms (producing fruit and vegetables in climate-controlled greenhouses), and AgTech Park by the Abi Dhabi Developmental Holding Company. The report explores the benefits and possibilities of the ag-tech sector generally, and also highlights some limitations and challenges.
The report also emphasises the impacts of food waste in the country, and the fact that migrant workers in contrast experience food insecurity, despite often engaging in strenuous physical labour. The report finds workers forgo meals due to fatigue, time constraints, financial strain, a lack of cooking devices or an unusable kitchen in accommodation, and inadequacies in the provision of meals by employers. The report looks at COVID-19 lockdowns as a case study. It also considers the negative health impacts of food insecurity and poor nutrition on workers.
The end of the report considers water scarcity in the country. Irrigated agriculture is a primary water consumer. The government has been implementing technological innovations to try to tackle this issue, and the report looks at the potential negative impacts of some of those innovations, such as the energy-intensive nature of desalination plants.