Today's Edition
MUSCAT (WAM)
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries recorded strong performance in the agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors during 2024, reflecting the growing role of these sectors in supporting food security and advancing economic diversification across the GCC, despite the environmental and natural challenges facing the region, particularly limited arable land and scarce water resources.
Data released by the Statistical Centre for the Cooperation Council for the Arab Countries of the Gulf showed that the contribution of the agriculture and fishing sector to gross domestic product at current prices reached around $40 billion in 2024, registering a 5.1 percent increase compared with 2023, while the sector’s share of the GCC’s gross domestic product remained stable at 1.7 percent.
The value of agricultural and fisheries exports also rose to $7.8 billion, up 7.5 percent, while imports reached $38.7 billion, an increase of 10.1 percent, reflecting continued GCC efforts to improve production efficiency and strengthen the food security system.
The sector’s overall indicators show that this growth was driven by increases in crop, livestock and fisheries production, alongside stronger intra-GCC and external trade in agricultural and fisheries products.
Total GCC crop production reached around 12.7 million tonnes in 2024, up 3.9 percent from around 12.2 million tonnes in 2023, while total livestock in the GCC stood at around 42.5 million head, recording 3.6 percent growth compared with the previous year.
Vegetables ranked first among plant products by volume, accounting for 45.8 percent of total GCC crop production, underscoring their central role in the GCC’s food production structure.
Meanwhile, sheep maintained their leading position in GCC livestock, accounting for 60.5 percent of total livestock across the GCC, with a total of 25.7 million head, followed by goats at around 12.5 million head, camels at 3.2 million head, and cattle at around 1.2 million head.
The report also highlighted the significant relative weight of goats in some GCC countries, where they account for 64.4 percent of total domestic livestock in the Sultanate of Oman and 44.4 percent in the United Arab Emirates.
In livestock production, GCC countries recorded clear growth in several key indicators. Table egg production reached around 12 billion eggs in 2024, compared with 11 billion eggs in 2023, reflecting growth of 8.4 percent.
Saudi Arabia led this indicator with a share of 70.4 percent, followed by Kuwait at 10.8 percent, the UAE at 9.4 percent, and Oman at 8.2 percent.
Chicken meat production also reached around 1.6 million tonnes, compared with 1.4 million tonnes in the previous year, posting strong growth of 17.9 percent, indicating continued expansion in the region’s livestock and food production chains.
In the fisheries sector, GCC countries also posted notable growth, with total fisheries production reaching around 1.1 million tonnes in 2024, up 12.2 percent compared with 2023, making it one of the fastest-growing food sectors during the year.
This performance reflects growing interest in fisheries and aquaculture as important pathways to support food security and diversify local production sources, especially given the GCC’s extensive coastlines and strong logistics and investment capabilities.
In terms of land use, the data indicate that the total land area of GCC countries stands at around 2.4 million square kilometres, while the land used for agriculture does not exceed 9.2 thousand square kilometres, equivalent to just 0.4 percent of the GCC’s total area.
This limited proportion reflects the scale of the geographical and environmental challenges facing agricultural expansion in the region, prompting GCC countries to focus on improving resource-use efficiency, adopting modern agricultural technologies, and expanding investments in protected agriculture and aquaculture.
With regard to intra-GCC trade, intra-regional exports of agricultural products among GCC countries reached around $4.8 billion in 2024, compared with $4.5 billion in 2023, representing growth of 7.2 percent. Intra-GCC fish exports reached around $214.4 million, compared with $189.3 million in the previous year, achieving growth of 13.3 percent.
These figures point to the rising level of trade and food integration among GCC countries, and also reflect the growing role of some member states as regional logistics hubs for the re-export and redistribution of agricultural and fisheries products.
This strong performance confirms that GCC countries are moving forward in strengthening Gulf agricultural integration through a unified strategy aimed at the optimal use of available water resources, securing food supplies from domestic sources, increasing production, and encouraging joint projects with active private-sector participation.
This approach is supported by a number of joint GCC programmes, including the Joint Programme for Coordinating Agricultural Plans and Policies, the Joint Programme for Surveys, Utilisation and Maintenance of Natural Resources, and the Joint Programme for Food Agricultural Production, in addition to a package of unified agricultural laws covering seeds, seedlings and saplings, fertilisers and soil enhancers, agricultural quarantine, agricultural pesticides, organic inputs and products, and the management of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
