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Pure Harvest Smart Farms News

A vertical farm in Sharjah. Similar facilities are being developed around the Gulf

Gulf reaches for vertical farming to bolster food security

A joint venture has been set up to develop a network of indoor vertical farms across Saudi Arabia as GCC governments seek to reduce their reliance on imported food. Mowreq Specialised Agriculture Co and biotech firm YesHealth Group have founded Vertical Farms Company, which will begin by building the kingdom’s largest indoor vertical farm in Riyadh.  The […]

Emirates-US joint venture opens world’s largest vertical farm

Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC) and US-based Crop One have announced the opening of Bustanica, the world’s largest hydroponic farm, backed by an investment of $40 million.  The facility is the first vertical farm for Emirates Crop One, the joint venture between the two companies, and is located near Al Maktoum airport at Dubai World Central. […]

Muslim spend on food increased by 6.9 percent in 2021

Muslims defy pandemic to spend $2trn globally in 2021

Bucking the global trend of tightening the purse strings, the world’s 1.9 billion Muslims spent the equivalent of $2 trillion at the height of the Covid pandemic. This spending reflects an 8.9 percent year-on-year growth from 2020 across a range of sectors offering halal food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fashion, travel, and media/recreation. According to the 2022 […]

Red Sea Farms ploughs new ground as investments soar

Saudi-based Red Sea Farms is planning to ride the wave of increased global investments in agricultural technology by organising a Series A funding round later this year. The move follows an oversubscribed Pre-Series A round last year of $16 million and also a recent strategic raise of $18.5 million. “The proceeds of our successful fundraise […]

Sky Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of Pure Harvest Smart Farms, a fast-growing agtech business

Pure Harvest aims to grow UAE’s next $1bn unicorn startup

“Why did such a promising young man leave Silicon Valley to grow tomatoes in the desert?”. It’s a question Stanford University business graduate and former private equity investor Sky Kurtz says he gets asked a lot, even by his own father-in-law.  “My wife’s father thought I’d lost my mind. He was literally like, ‘there’s something […]

A worker displays grains of wheat at a mill in Lebanon, where the cost of a loaf of bread rose 70 percent in March

Ukraine war drives Gulf to double down on food security

As the war in Ukraine has pushed up food prices and disrupted supply chains, hard-hit Mena countries explore ways to protect themselves In Abu Dhabi clusters of fresh tomatoes are growing inside rows of climate-controlled greenhouses in the middle of the desert – just one example of the lengths the arid region must go to […]