11. The Role of Bahrain Local Food Production System in Ensuring Sustainable Food Security

Bahrain, severely constrained by limited agricultural resources such as limited water resources, poor and declining quality of the soil, and unfavourable climate as a result of which the country has low food sufficiency rates for the main food commodities, with the exception of some fruits and vegetables. As result of which agriculture sector contributes less than 1 % to Bahrain’s real GDP, which means Bahrain remains heavily dependent on imports to meet its domestic demand for most agricultural products. In view of this therefore, with the world facing perfect storm of food scarcity, Bahrain needs to focus on lowering its food imports and increasing agricultural production in order to boost the contribution of agricultural sector to its Gross Domestic Product. The aim of this paper is to review the role of local production system in ensuring food security, focusing on the incentive framework aimed at diversifying the economies and increasing the level of food security. From the discussion it is therefore clear that Bahrain’s Agricultural Policy is towards the right direction of creating impact on the role of local food production system embracing diversified production base focusing on strategic option for a sustained growth of productivity and diversification of economies in general. In specific it significantly emphasizes on non-traditional methods of production which in turn spells out a sound strategic option for ensuring sustainable food security in Bahrain.