No ordinary harvest
This tech-enabled agribusiness farm in Abu Dhabi has created a solution that could be replicated in other parts of the world
Sky Kurtz lays bare the hard, cold facts. “There's a commonly cited statistic of needing 70 per cent more food to feed the nine and a half billion people that will be on the planet by 2050.” A former investment banker who moved into private equity investing before earning an MBA at Stanford Business School in the US, which is where Sky confesses, he got bitten by the tech bug.
Sky, Co-founder and CEO of Pure Harvest Smart Farms, a techenabled agribusiness farm in Abu Dhabi, was looking to “put my dent in the universe” and went on to study agribusiness, a sector in which he found his calling and when he began seeing the huge problem that food is for humanity. “We’re not creating more water. We’re not creating more land. Resource efficiency and solutions on both the supply side and on the demand side of things are needed to solve this cataclysmic problem of feeding almost 10 billion people.”
Fast forward, Sky arrived in the Middle East and implemented his Silicon Valley technology and investment career acumen into food. It was here that he joined forces with the now Pure Harvest Smart Farms Co-Founders Robert Kupstas and Mahmoud Adi.
“Robert, who was part of the international, renewable energy agency arena, studying water saving solutions for the Middle East, had an idea that he had been working on,” says Sky. The idea centred on tacking up large-scale controlled environment tech solutions that are being proven in other parts of the world and carrying out such operations here to solve the water problem in producing food in a waterintensive sector in the UAE.
“Because of my extensive research, I developed a contrarian thesis – I believe that the Middle East can be among the lowest cost producers in the world, if not the lowest cost user of fruits and vegetables in the world,” says Sky. He then thought if a system could be developed that decoupled the relationship of food production from climate, and instead married it to sun.
Enter Pure Harvest Smart Farms here in the UAE where the problem was most acute. “If you could develop a solution that could be successful here – economically producing locally-grown, high-quality, safe, affordable and sustainable products – you would have a huge business opportunity, and then you could bring that solution to other parts of the world.”
Pure Harvest Smart Farms is doing just that, with a solution that has been developed and now proven here. The AgTech farm is already expanding and has completed two new builds in the United Arab Emirates, with planned expansions in Saudi Arabia which will be finished in November and another project in Kuwait in the pipeline. “The great thing about Pure Harvest Smart Farms, the solution we’ve developed, is that it provides for food security, water conservation, economic diversification, and sustainability, all with one solution, which is investigating food production. The good news for consumers is that the solution is that we are bringing the cost down.”
Pure Harvest Smart Farms began as a pilot commercial scale production facility with tomatoes at the helm and was presented to prove technological feasibility and product market fit. “We wanted to prove we could sell a widget to Walmart and make money because then you’ll believe me when I say I can grow an exotic produce such as the Yoom, a black tomato and sell that to the first-class cabins at Emirates airlines.”
Pure Harvest Smart Farms currently grows 26 varieties of tomatoes and has produced six commercial varieties of strawberries. “We’ve been conducting research and development on strawberries for nearly a year, which is a very complex, environmental operation.”
It is also in the process of launching a very large leafy greens production, producing tremendous amounts of leafy greens that are set to hit the market in late July, with strawberries hitting the market in September. “We already sell strawberries today to Spinneys and some to Waitrose, however, at a very, very limited pilot production right now.”
Looking to the future, Sky reveals that more greens will soon be produced, along with berries, and a wider range of tomatoes. He adds that Pure Harvest Smart Farms will be building on its strengths and consumers can expect to see even more crops on the supermarket shelves soon, but at costs that will please and aid the production of sustainable produce well into the future.
To find out more, visit pureharvest.ae
The solution we’ve developed provides for food security, water conservation, economic diversification and sustainability