São Paulo – Saudi Arabia will invest in vertical farms, where crops are grown in a smaller footprint and controlled space, usually indoors. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) signed a joint venture agreement with US-based company AeroFarms to build and operate indoor vertical farms in the Arab country and throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The news was announced on the Saudi Arab News website.
The joint venture expects to use AeroFarms’s innovative farming platform, AgTech, to produce crops year-round. The use of natural resources, such as water and land, will be optimized with the technology. According to the PIF, the plan is for farms to use 95% less water than traditional agriculture in crops. Pictured above, an AeroFarms vertical farm in the USA.
Through the new joint venture, numerous vertical farms are expected to be built in the region in the coming years. The first of them will be in Saudi Arabia and could be the largest of its kind in the MENA, with an annual production capacity of 1,100 tonnes.
The head of Consumer Goods and Retail at PIF’s MENA Investments Division, Majed Al-Assaf, said with the farms, the region could rely more on local products, which will be of high quality and grown sustainably, using the latest technologies. The partnership is in line with PIF’s strategy of developing key sectors of the Saudi economy.
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro