Rainfed cereals mainly sorghum and millet are widely recognised as smart crops for drought tolerance, climate adaptability, and high nutritional values and cultivated mainly in dryland regions of the world.
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sorghum, millet and sesame are grown in over 70,000 ha mainly in the southwestern region mainly by small scale farmers and can be an important source of grains and oil as well as livestock forage and feed products.
In the framework of the ongoing project of the Sustainable Rural Agricultural Development Programme (SRAD) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the importance of rainfed cereals on a national scale is reinforced by bringing together stakeholders to promote cooperation and partnership through consultation and aligning the strategic development of rainfed cereals sector and its contribution to food security and transformation. With strong collaboration with Saudi Reef and the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Agriculture (MoEWA), the SRAD project organized the first ‘’National Workshop on Rainfed Cereals Production for Food Security and Sustainable Rural Development” recently in Riyadh.
