The Present State and Future Prospects of the Yemeni Agriculture

Al-Sabai, Abdulghani – Neszmélyi, György Iván

Keywords: agricultural economy, structural development, employment, food self-sufficiency, food imports, Q18, N55, O13, R14

In the study the authors gave an analytic insight to the economic challenges of Yemen, the country which is located in the southwestern part of the Arab peninsula, with special focus on the critical problems of the agricultural sector.
Even though Yemen cannot be considered as a typical „oil-state”, like other countries in the Arab peninsula , it has significant amount of natural resources , moreover its geopolitical and geo-economic importance derives from its location (Yemen is located by Bab el-Mandeb Strait which is a critical point of the navigation route between the Red Sea and the Indian ocean.)
The authors believe that the situation in Yemen, which can be characterized with all negative attributes of a long-lasting civil war, will be reconciliated and the economic policy-makers will then search the alternatives for such a development policy which will be able to lead Yemen out of its critical state towards prosperity. From among the reasonable alternatives, the development of the agricultural sector, including the necessary infrastructure and logistic background, seems to be the most promising, as it could bring about social development by creating a significant number of new jobs, moreover it could contribute to a better domestic food supply and agricultural export revenues by which the costs of food imports could be merely diminished as well.

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