Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has signed a joint venture agreement with New Jersey-based AeroFarms to establish a company in Riyadh to build and operate indoor vertical farms in the Kingdom with an eye toward expansion in the wider MENA region, according to a report in Arab News and a press release from the PIF.
The JV will employ AeroFarms’ “proprietary smart agriculture technology platform, AgTech, to produce high-quality crops all year round,” and will “will optimize the utilization of natural resources, including water and agricultural lands, through the implementation of indoor vertical farming, with no need for arable land, resulting in significantly higher yields and using up to 95 percent less water versus traditional field farming, according to a PIF statement.”
The first farm in Saudi Arabia, which is expected to be the largest indoor vertical farm of its kind in the MENA region, will have an annual production capacity of up to 1.1 million kilos of agricultural crops, the PIF said.
