Dairy farming plays a crucial role in Saudi Arabia’s agricultural industry. However, the intensive milk production process exerts pressure on local water and energy resources. This study aims to examine the impact of water stress and renewable energy consumption shocks on milk production in Saudi Arabia by using data from 2000 to 2021. The empirical analysis used the VAR model, Granger causality, forecast error variance decompositions (FEVDs), and impulse response functions (IRFs). The presence of a negative significant interdependence between total milk production and water stress levels in agriculture was observed. Significant bidirectional causality relationships among the variables were noted. The FEVD results show that water stress levels in agriculture are becoming a more dominant driver of variations in total milk production in Saudi Arabia, while the empirical evidence of the IRFs implies that milk production increases when both water stress levels and renewable energy are present. The adoption of water recycling and reuse systems on dairy farms can help farmers to improve water use efficiency. The encouragement of decision makers to formulate policies to support sustainable water resource management, reduce environmental impact, accelerate technological advancements, and initiate positive socioeconomic outcomes for the dairy industry is highly recommended.

Purpose. This research aims to identify the challenges of the food security indicators in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries for the period 2000–2020. Methodology / approach. The dataset of this study includes the annual secondary data covering the time 2000–2019 of the six GCC countries. The dependents variables represent the food security indicators whereas, the independents variables (explanatory) represent the challenging factors of the food security at the macro-level data. All the studied variables are reshaped in the balanced panel form; thus, the study uses a long panel, it has many periods (T = 20 years) but few entities (n = 6 countries of GCC) with the total 120 observation. The study applies three alternatives to panel data analysis. Results. The results show that population is a significant driver of food security challenges in the GCC countries. Moreover, food price inflation has a significant impact on the food availability and stability but show no significance on food access and utilization. Fertilizer consumption causes significant problems with food use. The results show that there is an evidence of significant differences in food security across the GCC countries. The random-effects estimators of regression coefficients of food availability and stability challenges are more statistically efficient than those for pooled ordinary least square and fixed effects. While the fixed effects estimators are most preferred for the coefficients of food access and utilization challenges. Originality / scientific novelty. Most scientific articles are mostly focused on examining the food security challenges from one separate aspect: economics, climate, or social aspects. Thus, the scientific novelty of the study is to investigate the combination of the food security challenges, social, economic, and agri-environmental factors in the GCC oil countries. Practical value / implications. Through this research, it is proposed that decision-makers embark on interferences that stimulate food security to meet the continual increase in population also future research should be applied to the other factors that challenged food security.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting food security for rural Sudanese households and to estimate price and income elasticities for Sudanese households based on their food security status. The results show that households living in northern and western rural regions are less likely to be food secure as compared to households living in eastern rural regions. Also, rural households are more likely to be food secure in the fall and winter seasons as compared to summer season. The results of price and income elasticities for secure and insecure households were almost similar. Income elasticities for both secure and insecure households show that cereals, milk & eggs, vegetables, staples, tea and coffee are necessities for rural households.

The paper aims to estimate Sudanese household food demand by focusing on six aggregated food items. The items are cereals (sorghum, millet, wheat), meat and chicken, milk and eggs, vegetables (okra, onion, tomato), staples (sugar, salt, oil), and caffeine intake (tea and coffee). The paper used the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) model to estimate Sudanese household food demand. The results showed that demographical variables have an impact on households' expenditure shares. For example, the results revealed that married respondents spend less from their income on cereals and staples compared to unmarried respondents. Also, men spend more from their income on caffeine compared to women. The results of the Marshallian own-price elasticities showed that all food items in Sudan are price inelastic indicating that price changes have a small impact on quantity demanded. Also, expenditure elasticities show that all food items in Sudan classified as necessities, except for meat and chicken. Ó 2020 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is consumed since the ancient era in the Arab region, particularly in Saudi Arabia. This study aims to assess the consumption of dates, its association with obesity in addition to estimate the nutrient indices of consumed dates among Saudi population in Al Ahsa region. Household Saudi males and females (n=477) were involved in this study. They were classified into three groups; children (n=46), Adolescents (n=72) and Adults (n=359). Data on anthropometric measurements, socioeconomic factors, and consumption of dates were collected from the respondents. Some nutrients of dates were analyzed to calculate the indices of energy, carbohydrates, non- starch polysaccharides (NSPs) in addition to determine some minerals and vitamin contents. The obtained results indicated that adolescents followed by adults consumed the highest amount of dates. The results also revealed that the consumed dates could secure about fourth of the recommended daily requirement of potassium and the fifth of both magnesium and NSPs. Moreover, the study found that obese persons dates consumption was the highest in comparison to underweight and normal weigh respondents (p<0.05), however; the correlation between dates consumption and body mass index (BMI) was low. The study confirmed the importance of daily consumption of dates in securing some minerals and indicated that dates consumption is not responsible for weight gaining.