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01 Feb 2025. Salalah's agricultural sector is experiencing tremendous change, as centuries of farming customs and practices meet the modern methods of high-productivity farming. In the last year, changes in policies, technology, and practices at the community level have fundamentally shifted rural livelihoods, food security, and the integration of sustainable daily farming practices.
Developments in Salalahi Agriculture
Changes in Farming Policies
Salalahi farmers' heritage practices and modern farming are more closely aligned. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries announced in early 2025 the launch of a new National Cultivation Framework, which subsidises both small traditional farming and large-scale modern farming. Furthermore, the policy has a new tiered structure, whereby heritage farmers receive subsidies for ancient date-palm orchards and falaj oases, and modern Agri businesses receive funding for drip irrigation, controlled environment farming, and digital sensor farming.
Additionally, there is a new ‘Green Growth Scholarships’ programme which subsidises the training of young farmers on the use of drones for soil mapping, automated fertigation, and breeding of salt-resistant crops. The purpose of this training is to bridge the gap between the older, traditional farmers and the younger, modern, technologically driven agripreneurs.
Technological Innovations and On-Farm Trials
In mid-2025, regional and national agricultural pilot projects in the Al Dhahirah and Al Sharqiyah regions began testing IoT-based soil moisture sensor probes and automated drip valves. These trials, in collaboration with local research centres, have demonstrated a 20 to 30% reduction in water use compared to traditional flood irrigation.
Using Salalah’s extreme desert conditions, solar-powered modules also created by modern agritech businesses can provide greenhouses with regulated temperatures to ensure ideal growth conditions for cucumbers and tomatoes. This is a large improvement over the vulnerable open-field cultivation that causes heat and water stress.
Impact on Farmers and Rural Areas
Livelihood Shift for Heritage Farmers
Salalah’s traditional farming families have relied for generations on date palms, citrus trees, and falaj-fed plots. With the new cultivation framework, many of these farmers can secure microloans to modernise their irrigation systems to include solar-powered pumps. Additionally, several heritage farmers are even able to report crop yield increases of 15-25% while still cultivating their ancestral plots.
In addition, cooperatives also organise training workshops, which teach the older generations to analyse moisture sensor data, thus relieving them of the need to do manual canal maintenance and conserving the falaj-managed system. This hybrid cultural approach improves productivity.
Recent trends exemplifying the modern Agri-entrepreneurship phenomenon are seen with the arms-length re-engagement of the rural youth with micro-farming for themselves and employment for others. Young Agri-entrepreneurs have set up and continue to develop micro-farms with vertical racks and hydroponics systems around the suburbs of Muscat and Sohar, and are producing, employing, and selling to local markets, leafy greens. They have micro-farms employing 10-15 young workers per micro-farm.
Surveys of the new Agri-preneurs show 60% are from other, non-Agri backgrounds. This indicates a pronounced positive shift in the agribusiness potential being demonstrated by the youth. The new entrepreneurial agribusiness potential being demonstrated by the rural youth micro-farming leads to the new digital agribusiness value chains.
Modern and Sustainable Outcomes
Soil Health and Water Conservation
Salalah’s precious groundwater is being protected by the modern systems being developed at the pilot sites in Salalah. The paired use of simple, low-cost moisture sensors with automated micro drip irrigation systems, in all the pilot sites, has, in the real world, and in comparison to the traditional flooding irrigation systems, closer to one-third less irrigation. This is good for groundwater because it works to eliminate the salinisation of over-irrigated fields.
Some heritage plots benefit from practices that support regenerative agriculture. With guidance from local agronomists, some farmers have been able to cut out chemical fertilisers and build the long-term resilience of their soils. For example, some farmers have reintroduced traditional crop rotations and are intercropping legumes with date palms to enhance soil structure and fix nitrogen.
Reducing Carbon Footprints
A new generation of farms that have modernised and enrolled in the 2025 pilot programmes have integrated solar-powered pumping and precision fertilisation. These additions have further reduced diesel consumption and prevented the runoff of excess fertilisation. As compared to diesel-driven irrigation systems, early estimates predict a 40% reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions, which will greatly support Salalah’s climate goals.
On traditional farms, a revival of organic composting programmes helps close the loop by transforming palm-waste biomass into soil amendments, which reduces synthetic input reliance and the emissions associated with fertiliser manufacture.
Challenges, Research Gaps, and Strategic Opportunities
Barriers to Widespread Adoption
The most prominent challenges that remain are still the same. For many small-holding traditional farmers, the lack of access to secure financing and the absence of technical support mean that, even when there are opportunities to automate, the barriers remain insurmountable. In addition, the extreme fragmentation of landholdings makes it financially unfeasible to implement large-scale modern systems in the remote villages.
From a technological standpoint, IoT networks and solar greenhouses are still prohibitively high in initial cost for many people. While subsidies exist, enduring maintenance, sensor calibration, and local technician training, all of which are necessary, still require capacity-building initiatives.
Knowledge and Research Gaps
There is a lack of longitudinal studies of crop yield elasticity combining understorey vegetables with traditional date-palm groves, and this is critical. There is also a lack of modelling of salinity risk with the different irrigation methods; this is also critical, though, and uses the methodology of hydrological tracing to predict soil health over time.
Additionally, we need to address the social aspect of adoption:
- What are the reasons the older farmers are hesitant to adopt new technologies?
- How can extension services best foster this intergenerational divide?
These are critical questions if we are to ensure the transformations are inclusive of the heritage growers and the next generation agripreneurs.
Strategic Opportunities for Scaling Impact
Building on early successes, forming new regional green-Agri hubs is expected, in line with the new policy framework. These hubs would integrate demonstration farms with training facilities, and additionally with maintenance and agronomic support services.
Public-private partnerships also offer significant potential, especially those that integrate fintech, water management, agronomy, and youth-led startups to provide Salalah’s agriculture fintech, irrigation-as-a-service, and pay solutions.
Dr. Eko Mahrous, PhD in precision-oriented Agricultural Engineering, states, “The increasing endorsement of combining legacy farming with state-of-the-art, sensor-driven systems represents an impactful shift. It empowers young farmers, who, in addition to falaj systems, use micro-irrigation and data tools, to achieve productivity advancements while preserving their heritage.”
