Abu Dhabi:
Feeding
the future
Abu Dhabi’s Agtech revolution is seeding tomorrow’s food supply
Around 70% of the world’s water is used in agriculture. The population is growing, we need to transform this sector to preserve the planet’s resources,” says Jan Gould, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive Drip Irrigation (RDI).
Gould’s company has a novel, nature-based irrigation process that improves agricultural water efficiency by up to 50%, enabling RDI to farm “sweetcorn, eggplant, cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, okra and sesame,” in the UAE’s challenging desert climate.
It’s an impressive example of the technologies emerging from Abu Dhabi’s flourishing Agtech sector – technologies that may become critical to feeding a growing global population in a changing climate.
Greening the desert
The UAE imports 80-90% of its food, because local farmers are faced with an “arid landscape, including extreme weather conditions, a lack of rain, saline groundwater, and poor soil quality,” says Gil Adoveti, Executive Director for Food and Agriculture at ADQ.
The Abu Dhabi-based investment and holding company is one of the drivers of food resilience for the Emirate and the nation and heavily involved in Agtech. Its landmark 200-hectare Agtech Park, a ‘tech-enabled fresh produce farming hub’, is expected to have an annual 39 kiloton production capacity, with its own storage and distribution facilities, once operational.
Through its Agtech focused portfolio company Silal, ADQ has also launched the Digital Agronomy Service that will have equipped 100 farms with IoT sensors by end of 2022, enabling better agronomic decisions and increasing productivity. The first crops of tomatoes and strawberries leveraging IoT sensors will be grown in 2023.
The projects form part of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s strategy to become more self-sufficient, particularly as the climate becomes more extreme. “Abu Dhabi and the UAE are committed to proactively investing in the future of agriculture, with technology playing an important part in building sustainable food production systems in a sector that is ripe for disruption,” says Adoveti.
Facing this challenge lends two advantages to local agribusinesses: an openness to new ideas, and an ideal testing ground for solutions that may become essential elsewhere in the world.
CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive Drip Irrigation
CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive Drip Irrigation
These qualities are part of what attracted Gould, a U.S. native, to working in Abu Dhabi. She says the government isn’t, “afraid to take a chance and try new innovations, change the known.”
Her company’s technology responds to chemical signals from plant roots to deliver water and nutrients only when needed, directly into the root zone. This precision has enabled RDI to “green the desert,” says Gould, cultivating crops on land that was previously considered unfarmable.
It could be a crucial technology for feeding a growing population in an increasingly challenging climate. And it is just one among many that Abu Dhabi is proactively supporting.
Environment for innovation
Overcoming intertwining food security and climate challenges requires, “robust public-private partnerships that integrate the efforts, funds and technologies of both sectors,” says Salmeen Alameri, CEO of Silal.
CEO of Silal
CEO of Silal
Silal is invested in a range of cutting-edge solutions for growing food in Abu Dhabi. One partnership is with AeroFarms, a leader in indoor vertical farming, where plants are grown in climate-controlled environments, stacked for optimum use of space.
Another is with Red Sea Farms, which has an innovative cooling technique that uses saline water to reduce water consumption in greenhouses, achieving, “a reduction in freshwater use for cooling by more than 80%, and a five-fold reduction in energy use versus conventional cooling,” according to Adoveti. “As research has identified the scarcity of fresh groundwater reserves and the increasingly salty groundwater as the most pressing challenges for sustainable agriculture in the UAE, this is a monumental step in the right direction”, continues Adotevi.
Gould says support from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) was crucial to RDI’s success. At first the ADIO helped RDI with financial incentives, navigating regulations, and finding real estate. But Gould says the real value was in the connections the office helped her make, beginning by introducing her to the, “free zone opportunity, where we can trade with other countries around the world easily.”
That support is ongoing. “They’re always bringing visitors to the site, and delegations from other parts of the world,” says Gould. “Since we started working with the ADIO in late 2020 we have expanded this technology into over 44 countries,” says Gould.
This level of support was another reason Gould chose to work in Abu Dhabi. But the emirate appealed to her as a place to live, too.
A warm welcome
“I first visited Abu Dhabi in 2019 for the Global Forum for Innovation in Agriculture,” says Gould. “The reception I received was extremely warm.”
“Sometimes in certain regions when you are new, people are hesitant to approach you or accept you,” she expands. “The acceptance has been so wonderful here that one of my dear friends and co-workers moved here because she found it such a wonderful environment to work in.”
It’s a warmth reflected in the city itself, says Gould, “The infrastructure and spaces they’ve created are really welcoming. There are parks, museums, galleries. That quality of life that has been developed makes it a truly wonderful place to find a home.”
Feeding the future
Food security is one of Abu Dhabi’s primary climate challenges. So, it is natural for the emirate to take a leading role in developing solutions to ensure the global population is fed.
Gould’s enthusiasm for Abu Dhabi is testament to the emirate grasping that opportunity with both hands. “Abu Dhabi has made a commitment not only to agriculture here, but to sustainability and liveability for people around the planet,” she concludes.
Executive Director for Food and Agriculture at ADQ
Executive Director for Food and Agriculture at ADQ
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