How technology is helping Gulf farmers extend their growing seasons

The climate in the Middle East can be far from ideal for growing crops. There are high temperatures , water scarcity and salty soils, and conditions are becoming ever harder with the region warming twice as a fast as the world as a whole. According to figures published by the International Energy Agency, there was an average temperature increase of 0.46ºC per decade between 1980 and 2022 in the region. In some areas rainfall is becoming scarcer or less predictable, even though climate change is also leading to an increase in extreme flooding events . This is at a time when world populations are increasing, with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank reporting forecasts that the GCC’s population will increase from around 59 million in 2022 to 84 million in 2100. “A country like the UAE, which imports between 80 to 90 per cent of its calories, has very specific challenges, both from a food supply perspective as well as from a local food production perspective,” said Sami Joost, head of public affairs, communication and open innovation for the Middle East at Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company. “We’re looking at a country with approximately one per cent available land with a high level of humidity, depending on the season, and a hot and dry climate in conjunction with a rapid population growth rate.” The UAE and other Gulf nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have secured farmland abroad to safeguard their food security. At home, they have invested in technologies such as hydroponics and vertical farming – in which plants are grown in optimal artificial conditions so water use can be minimised and yields maximised. Other technologies, some of which have emerged from the region, are helping to insulate farmers from some of the ever-growing challenges to agriculture posed by climate change. SecondSky technology, which has roots in Saudi Arabia, offers farmers the chance to have greenhouses that let through the light needed for photosynthesis, but block some of the heat. This is achieved by applying a specially-made film to the roofs of greenhouses and similar facilities. It has been patented by AgTech start-up Iyris, which is based in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the US. “If you can reduce the heat load, you can make plants healthier and more productive across a range of environmental conditions,” said Iyris executive chairman John Keppler. Iyris, which began sales about a year ago, recently announced that it had raised $16 million from investors. With four out of five farms being “low technology”, Mr Keppler said farmers could earn their money back within a year with the technology because, for example, the growing season could start earlier and finish later. At a project in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, a farmer was still growing fresh cucumbers in mid-July, while nearby producers, without Iyris’s film, had stopped in June, Mr Keppler said. “You’re able to grow the crop cycle window to a longer period of time,” he said. “That generally translates into higher yields because you’re growing for longer, but more important and more immediate is the reduction in water usage and energy to the extent that folks are using mechanical cooling.” Water usage can fall by 30 to 40 per cent, Mr Keppler said, something that might be particularly useful in the Middle East. “When you document the water savings, the energy savings, this can transform what had been a fairly challenged farming environment,” he said. Companies such as Bayer are improving the genetics of crops so that they are better able to cope with extreme weather of the kind found in the Gulf region. In partnership with Silal, a UAE agritech firm, Bayer is running seed trials of more than 40 varieties of tomato, cucumber, melon, eggplant and red pepper in greenhouses and open fields. “What we really want to understand is how these crops are performing in terms of fruit size, fruit weight, shelf life, fruit quality, as well as potentially assessing if there’s an opportunity to extend breeding cycles for these crops, which is important if you consider stepping up or increasing efficiency when it comes to local food production,” Mr Joost said. Improved crop varieties may result from traditional breeding techniques or genetic engineering. Dr Sarah Garland, founder and executive director of the Triple Helix Institute for Agriculture, Climate and Society, a non-profit organisation, described genetic engineering as “an important tool” for developing crops able to cope with extreme heat and drought. “For example, scientists in Argentina developed drought-tolerant wheat by inserting a gene from sunflower into the wheat genome that helps the plant’s response to a lack of water,” she said. “This wheat was first approved for cultivation in Argentina in 2020 and has since been given the green light for commercialisation in multiple countries.” Another approach comes from using digital technology to optimise farming operations. FarmERP, an Indian-based company, offers such technology in more than 30 countries including the UAE and, like Bayer, works with Silal. “With new AI and machine-learning tools … it helps improve the predictability of the farms,” said Sanjay Borkar, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. Technology such as a mobile app, available in Arabic, can help farmers to improve the efficiency of farming, and Mr Borkar said his firm’s technology operated across all steps in the farming supply chain. “We help the farms to optimise their resources like manpower, machines, labour, inputs – fertilisers, chemicals, water. This will definitely improve the margins, the profits,” he said. Customised advisory information, devised using artificial intelligence, can indicate, for example, the optimum water and nutrition requirements for crops, based on factors such as the weather. “It helps in providing the pest and disease detection or pest and disease prediction based on satellite imagery as well as future weather data,” Mr Borkar said. As well as potentially increasing yields, and making it possible to cope with harsher climatic conditions, the technology can reduce a farmer's contribution to climate change. It can calculate how much carbon is isolated through practices such as agroforestry – by mixing crops with trees – compared to the amount emitted by chemicals, fertilisers and fuels. “Agriculture today is a significant contributor to climate change, yet there are ways to make farming part of the solution,” Mr Joost said. “[This] is why we need to drive a shift to regenerative agriculture practices that ‘produce more with less, while restoring more’, a concept that is highly relevant and applicable to the Middle East in light of regional food security concerns.”

How technology is helping Gulf farmers extend their growing seasons

Innovation is helping reduce the risk of rising temperatures while working towards food security issues