Fresh vegetables and fruits from local farms and abroad are continuously flooding supermarkets and outlets in Qatar, amid the economic blockade imposed by the Saudi-led group, it is learnt.
These fresh food items, including milk and dairy products, come from countries in various regions such as the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Australia, providing residents with an array of choices at reasonable prices.
Speaking to Gulf Times, a source from a leading supermarket in Qatar said cargo planes fly tonnes of fresh produce almost every day from countries such as India, Iran, and Turkey.
“We have enough for residents and the growing demand for locally-produced vegetables also prompt local farms to produce more,” he noted. “There is also a plan to bring fresh milk from India.”
The supermarket offers a variety of vegetables from Iran such as green beans, capsicum, and cucumber while flat beans, red chili, and canary melon come from Turkey, which also supplies fresh milk and other milk products such as laban, yogurt, and labneh.
Other variety of vegetables such as pumpkin and bottle gourd come from Oman while spices like garlic, turmeric, ginger, and onions are imported from India. Bangladesh supplies string beans, round egg plant, and papaya.
Fruits such as apple, orange, banana, mango, plum, avocado, pear, and pineapple come from Kenya, Uganda, Brasil, Africa, Spain, Kenya, the Netherlands, Italy, Holland, India and the Philippines.
Locally-produced and organic vegetables, mostly cucumber, tomatoes, eggplant, lemons, and mushrooms, also are available in nearly all supermarkets.
According to the source, a large volume of eggs that come from Qatari farms are being patronised by many residents.
“They find the eggs tasty and cheaper compared to some of the imported ones,” he said. “The economic blockade has even given residents plenty of choices.”
In another supermarket, many of the root crops on its shelves such as sweet potato, potato, beetroot, turnip, green beans, white cabbage and white radish are from Morocco.
An employee cited growing demand for local produce such as tomato, capsicum, cucumber, white mushrooms and brown mushrooms.
“Customers always look for these kind of items every day and as far as I know local farms are trying to further increase their production to meet the demand,” he said.
He added that countries like Holland, Thailand, Spain, France, and the US continue to export items like capsicum, lettuce, green beans, corn, jackfruit, chili, asparagus, and mango in large quantities.
Many supermarkets also have local fresh herbs and leaves such mint, spinach, kangkong, molukhiya, dill, ruwid, red cheera, palak, salike rocca, bakle, and ghobi for sale at reasonable prices.
An array of dairy products from countries such as Denmark, UK are also available.