Governor Kim was granted an audience with Global Dryland Alliance Ambassador Al-Dafa on June 4, and expanded plant factory of Gyeonggi Province into the world.

Gyeonggi Governor Kim Moon-soo was granted an audience with the ambassador Al-Dafa of Global Dryland Alliance (GDLA), which is scheduled to be established as UN international agency, and discusses over directions and mutual cooperation for Gyeonggi Province & Qatar plant factory cooperative project in his office at 11 a.m. on June 4.

GDLA, led by Qatar, will be founded as UN international agency in 2014 for the purpose of cooperation between countries in resolving desert country-related issues such as food security and water resources. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also was an active supporter of the establishment.

Ambassador Al-Dafa was accompanied by Qatari ambassador to Korea Al Marri in his visit of this time. Ambassador Al-Dafa held a post as UN Deputy Secretary-General for 5 consecutive years from 2007, and directs major tasks of GDLA now. GDLA is developing programs to resolve food security issues in desert countries in cooperation with Islamic Development Bank (IDB), one of which relates to development and supply of high-tech plant factory.

Gyeonggi Provincial Delegation participated in the annual general meeting of IDB, held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, from May 18 to 22, and promoted high-tech plant factory of Gyeonggi Province to delegations from 56 Islamic countries.

Ambassador Al-Dafa visited Korea to make a specific agreement with Gyeonggi Province to establish a pilot plant of the high-tech plant factory generating renewable energy in Doha, Qatar in cooperation with Gyeonggi Province. Once successful model is developed by Gyeonggi Province, it will be supplied to member countries of GDLA and other Islamic countries as well as Qatar.

Governor Kim Moon-soo said, “Food security is a significant issue that all nations are keeping their eyes on, besides desert countries including the Middle East. Gyeonggi Province will examine various methods that utilize high agricultural technology of Gyeonggi Province in cooperation for the purpose of the resolution of food shortage.”

Ambassador Al-Dafa set out his intention to push ahead with the joint project in cooperation with IDB, saying “Qatar wants to conclude a MOA for the establishment of plant factory with Gyeonggi Province and complete the construction as quickly as possible.”

In addition to the plant-factory-related project, he also suggested Gyeonggi liaison official’s residing in Doha, Qatar, so that small and medium companies having high technology and agricultural companies in Gyeonggi Province can venture into the region.

Technological development for the plant factory by the mutual cooperation between Gyeonggi Province and GDLA is expected to have a great ripple effect on the propagation of the factory to the world. Gyeonggi Agricultural Research & Extension Services is recently developing seeding robot, plant transporting robot, and harvesting robot in partnership with Agricultural Biotechnology Convergence Cooperative in order to deploy the plant factory on a commercial scale. Accordingly, we can expect the development of the internationally-standardized plant factory model by applying such automatic systems into the pilot plant in Qatar.