High-tech indoor farming seen as key to fixing Dubai’s food supply

With temperatures in the desert city regularly exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in summer months, a massive 80% of the Dubai’s food supply is imported.

By Chloe Taylor
CNBC
Oct 2, 2019

Excerpt:

“Our region is agriculturally challenged,” Al Jundi added. “I really wanted to solve a problem and impact this region positively — and I want to inspire the rest of the rest of the region as well. We have a long list of issues and problems, we need to start tackling them.”

By confronting the UAE’s food supply problem, Badia Farms is also helping Dubai work toward its sustainability goals. By reducing the need for long-distance transport, Al Jundi’s indoor farm and others like it are reducing the carbon footprint of the food consumed in the city. Additionally, thanks to the technology being employed, Al Jundi’s said his facility uses 90% less water than open-field farms.

“We control the humidity, we control the temperature, we control the CO2,” he told CNBC. “We’ve got dehumidifiers to regulate the humidity… and each one produces 60 liters of water, so in the summer we were water positive for the first time.”

The farm’s annual crop yield is claimed to be much higher than that of a traditional farm.

“Depending on the crop (we can produce) between four to eight times (as much),” Al Jundi said. “For example, with lettuce we could grow twelve cycles a year, compared to conventional farming which has four cycles a year.”

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