RIYADH: The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture on Wednesday launched an awareness campaign called “Harvest Season” to promote locally produced fruits and raise the efficiency of its marketing system to support Saudi farmers.
The Saudi Press Agency reported that the launch was part of efforts aimed at raising awareness of the importance of eating local fruits; promoting a healthy lifestyle by buying local produce; and spreading knowledge of agricultural products.
Saleh Bindakhil, the ministry’s official spokesperson, said: “The campaign aims to educate the public about the health and nutritional benefits of various local fruits that are available in different seasons during the year, and to achieve a set of goals that are in line with the ministry’s policies and strategies and the objectives of Vision 2030.”
Bindakhil added that “Harvest Season” also aimed to support the production of local goods; enhance their quality and safety; increase awareness of agricultural produce and the health benefits of eating local fruits; help the marketing of local products; and support local farmers, while increasing their income in accordance with Saudi Vision 2030, which aims to improve the standard of living and raise the quality of life.
He acknowledged the great support enjoyed by the agricultural sector from the leadership, which had contributed to enhancing the sustainability of local crop production and increased the sector’s contribution to the Kingdom’s gross domestic product to SR100 billion.
This support has directly contributed to increasing and strengthening the rates of self-sufficiency in a number of fruits and agricultural crops, including dates, figs, cantaloupes, watermelons, grapes, mangoes, and pomegranates.
Environment Ministry launches ‘Harvest Season’ campaign to promote local fruits
https://arab.news/bbevn
Environment Ministry launches ‘Harvest Season’ campaign to promote local fruits
- Initiative aims at raising awareness of the importance of produce
- ‘Campaign aims to educate the public about health and nutritional benefits,’ says spokesperson Saleh Bindakhil
Leading AI company to partner with Saudi Arabia, CEO tells Arab News
- Argentum’s Andrew Sobko: ‘Very easy’ to build new infrastructure, data centers in Kingdom
- In 2024, Saudi Arabia announced $100bn plan to establish AI hub
CHICAGO: The founder and CEO of Argentum AI, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, has told Arab News that he is looking forward to partnering with Saudi Arabia.
Ukrainian-born Andrew Sobko, based in Chicago, said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made a significant commitment to AI use.
In 2024, Saudi Arabia announced a $100 billion plan under Vision 2030 to build a hub to develop technology and data centers to handle a significant portion of the world’s AI workload.
The Kingdom reportedly expects AI to contribute more than $135.2 billion to its gross domestic product by 2030, representing roughly 12.4 percent of its economy.
“The US still is the kind of core leader of this AI innovation, development and infrastructure, but we quickly realized that Saudi Arabia sees this as an important asset class, not just as an innovation,” Sobko said.
“They’re deploying tons of capital. If you try to build some new infrastructure or data center, it’s very easy to do it in Saudi Arabia,” he added. “Saudi Arabia realizes and sees this compute as almost like a second asset class after oil.”
The term “compute” refers to the process of calculations that fuels AI development and applications in everyday use.
“The Middle East wants to be one of the largest exporters of compute. They realized that a couple of years ago and they’re aggressively expanding,” Sobko said, adding that AI is being used more and more in industries such as sports, in which Saudi Arabia has invested heavily.
Argentum AI recently added Majed Al-Sorour, CEO of the Saudi Golf Federation, to its board.
“Majed is also a huge believer in AI and AI infrastructure,” said Sobko. “With the help of Majed, we’re focusing on global expansion. He’s leading charge on that.”
Sobko said the challenge is not simply recognizing the importance of AI, but the ability to power data centers that it requires, and Saudi Arabia recognizes that need.
“If you secure a significant amount of power and you have data center capacity, you can actually control this kind of compute and AI,” he added.
“And the biggest bottleneck to continue expanding as we enter into this new age of robotics industry, it needs a lot more compute.”
Following meetings with US leadership, including President Donald Trump last November, Saudi Arabia secured agreements on AI technology transfers, aiming to avoid reliance on other nations’ systems.
