Farming at the Edge: Producing Food Under Extreme Constraints
CASE STUDIES
This session draws on three contrasting frontiers of constraint: agricultural production under active conflict in Ukraine, chronic food insecurity across dryland farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, and state-directed food system transformation in the Gulf region. Each examines what fails first under extreme pressure, what adaptations have sustained output, and whether the lessons are transferable.
- Ukraine: When logistics collapse, inputs are disrupted, and export routes become unstable, what has sustained production — and what capacity has been permanently lost?
- Sub-Saharan Africa: Are smallholder adaptations to drought, soil depletion, and input scarcity genuine pathways to scalable resilience — or coping mechanisms under persistent constraint? When systems are pushed to the edge, what determines resilience — and why do some producers absorb shocks while others cannot?
- GCC/Gulf Region: When a region imports most of its food and faces acute constraints of land, water, and climate, what does it mean to build food security from scratch? Across the Gulf, from Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 agricultural programme and NEOM's climate-proof production systems to the UAE's Food Tech Valley and Qatar's post-blockade food sovereignty drive, the GCC represents the world's most concentrated cluster of high-capital, technology-first bets on controlled environment agriculture, vertical farming, and agri-innovation. How far can engineered abundance substitute for natural resource endowments -and what does this model offer, or not, to food systems with neither the capital nor the conditions to replicate it?
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