ABU DHABI, UAE – Pure Harvest Smart Farms (Pure Harvest) on Tuesday announced a new partnership with Al Dahra and PlanTFarm for a commercial-scale pilot scheme to bring the benefits of controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) to the animal feed industry.
The partnership will utilize a proprietary, fit-for-purpose, low-cost indoor farming solution, a press release said.
Pure Harvest is a leading sustainable technology-enabled agribusiness headquartered in the UAE.
Al Dahra is a diversified global agribusiness that is a leader in the cultivation and production of animal feed while PlanTFarm is a smart farming solutions provider.
The innovative smart farm utilizes PlanTFarm’s cutting-edge, AI-powered vertical farm technology, engineered to reduce the capital intensity and energy consumption of the growing system to farm fresh, nutritious animal feed.
The facility will be co-located within livestock farms to localize animal feed in Al Ain, UAE, using 95 percent less water per kilogram versus traditional farming means.
The collaboration aims to reduce the UAE’s import dependency by offering an economic, sustainable and scalable localized farming solution.
The pilot solution and commercial partnership has been under development since early-2022 and preliminary results show promise.
Sky Kurtz, CEO of Pure Harvest, said, “Our region imports the lion’s share of its animal feed requirements to protect its endangered water resources – coming at a cost to food security, feed price volatility and nutrition quality.”
He said, “We don’t believe our region’s farmers should have to choose… and if we’re right, this solution is scalable to other water-scarce parts of the world.”
He added, “With food systems a major focus of COP28, we are pleased to announce this project which, if successful, could have huge benefits for the animal husbandry industry globally. This inventive partnership is yet another example of sustainability-inspired innovation coming from our region.”
Kurtz said, “I’m excited to see how the expertize of Pure Harvest, Al Dahra and PlanTFarm can offer the chance to make resource-efficient, localized animal feed production possible anywhere in the world, regardless of climate.”
Arnoud van den Berg, Group CEO of Al Dahra said, “Our core purpose is to sustainably feed a growing world. We do this at scale by partnering with stakeholders, deploying cutting edge agritech, regenerative and sustainable agricultural practices while optimizing our supply chain.”
He said, “This initiative is a perfect example of our purpose in action. This innovative, water-saving project builds upon our existing successful CEA partnership with Pure Harvest, and we look forward to collaborating with Korea’s PlanTFarm.”
Yong Park, Head of Global Business Operations at PlanTFarm, said, “PlanTFarm is proud to engineer this ground-breaking, low-cost vertical farming solution. This innovative project leverages our company’s core technological capabilities to unearth a practical, profitable, and more sustainable application of vertical farming for the animal feed industry.”
He said, “We are pleased to be partnering with Pure Harvest and Al Dahra and hope that this is the first of many opportunities to work together.”
Design, engineering, and procurement for the project is complete, and construction will begin in early 2024, the release added.