(MENAFN) AeroFarms, a company specializing in vertical farming, has recently opened a 65,000 square feet facility in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and has signed a joint venture agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to establish a company in Riyadh. This new venture aims to build and operate indoor vertical farms in the Kingdom and the Middle East and North Africa regions. The company's innovative vertical farming technology enables it to grow plants with 90 crop cycles a year, which is a significant increase compared to the usual five crop cycles. David Rosenberg, co-founder and CEO of AeroFarms, stated at the FII priority conference on Thursday that their facility in Virginia feeds the entire United States.
AeroFarms chose to work with early adopters, and the spirit of innovation in the Middle East has allowed people to be the first to embrace their technology. The region's lack of arable land and freshwater makes it an ideal fit for the company, which can grow a plant with less than 5 percent of the water needed to grow one outdoors, according to Rosenberg. He added that AeroFarms' technology can help with food security and enable local food production in the region, and their joint venture with the Public Investment Fund provides the capital to build it.
Furthermore, the facility in Abu Dhabi and upcoming facilities in other parts of the region would also serve as innovation hubs for robots and artificial intelligence. These innovations could then be expanded to AeroFarms' farms globally, providing a more efficient and sustainable approach to farming. AeroFarms' expansion into the Middle East marks a significant milestone in the development of sustainable food production and represents a major step towards achieving food security for the region.
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