Agricultural Finance Towards Food Security in Saudi Arabia

Achieving food securityFood security is the main target that all countries strive to realize. The provision of finance for agricultural projects and activities is the key factor for sustaining food securityFood security. For Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has prioritized food securityFood security in its VisionVision 2030. This chapter aimed to shed light on the role played by agricultural financeAgricultural finance in achieving food securityFood security in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It also sheds light on the Agricultural Development Fund (ADFAgricultural Development Fund (ADF)): general requirements for accepting applications for creditCredit services, lendingLending terms, creditCredit services, and others. It is evidence that KSA has realized the importance of agricultural financeAgricultural finance in sustaining food securityFood security thus establishing the ADFAgricultural Development Fund (ADF). It has also assigned the role of sustaining KSA food securityFood security to the Ministry of Environment, Water and AgricultureAgriculture (MEWA) represented by the General Food SecurityFood security Authority (GFSA). The ADFAgricultural Development Fund (ADF) is playing a crucial role in sustaining food securityFood security in KSA through liaising with MEWA and the National Development Fund in the provision of support, creditCredit, and consultancy to agricultural investors (investing locally and/or abroad) and importers. The annual values of ADFAgricultural Development Fund (ADF)’s loans distributed to beneficiaries are increasing over time by 13.7 million US Dollars/annum. It is clear that the ADFAgricultural Development Fund (ADF) has contributed effectively to enable the Kingdom to achieve its current situation of food securityFood security, which can be called stable and food secure.