A new crop of entrepreneurs is prepping the ground to grow food in the desert.
Al Kodmani is now working on the UEA’s Food Innovation Hub, part of a project by the World Economic Forum to gather expertise on how to create the next generation of local growers.
By Christopher Lord
Monocle
July 2026
Excerpt:
“Just try this,” says American entrepreneur Sky Kurtz, who just might be the farmer of the future. Wearing a Barbour gilet despite the summer sun beating outside, Kurtz pours Monocle an ice-cold glass of blended strawberries, picked less than 24 hours earlier. Without any added sugar, the drink is sweet and as thick as clotted cream. “If you’d have told me five years ago that I’d be having a strawberry smoothie in the middle of the desert…” He pauses, lost for words for perhaps the only time in our interview. “Well, I would have loved it.”
Kurtz is co-founder of Pure Harvest Smart Farms, a start-up based in Al Ain, an oasis city east of Abu Dhabi. After making wearable devices for cattle and managing assets for venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Kurtz wanted to “make a dent in the universe” and set about revolutionising how people in hot, harsher climates get their greens.The strawberries are grown in one of the firm’s vast greenhouses, which can grow crops even in the extreme heats of a uae summer. According to Pure Harvest, 83 per cent of the water put into the soil leaves with the vegetables, thanks to a highly controlled system of hydroponic irrigation. “It allows us to precisely control the nutrients to the plant,” says Kurtz. “We’re able to take the water that’s not utilised, run it, treat it and put it back into the system so that we don’t lose fertilisers or the water. We are 30 times more productive than a field farm and typically 20 times more water efficient.”
Read the complete article here.
Source: https://cityfarmer.info/a-new-crop-of-entrepreneurs-is-prepping-the-ground-to-grow-food-in-the-desert/
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