Philip Hart

Feeding the Future: The Agri-Food Deal Showcase

The core message of this session was that Abu Dhabi’s food, water and energy constraints create a clear investment case for agri-tech and desalination innovation. Host Georgia Tolley opened the investor-stage discussion by framing LiveX 2026 around livability and economic profitability, then narrowed the focus to food and Abu Dhabi’s agri-tech ecosystem. Dr. Philip Hart of the Technology Innovation Institute explained that recent conflict had sharpened attention on where the UAE gets both its food and water, making resilience a practical investment and technology challenge rather than an abstract policy topic. Hart first addressed desalination, stressing that water is inexpensive per cubic metre but costly at national scale because the UAE produces just over 7,000,000 cubic metres of water per day. The fundamental issue is the energy required to remove salt from seawater, so the objective is to make desalination cheaper and recover more fresh water from every intake. He then connected this directly to agriculture: the UAE imports about 90% of its food, and less than 5% of its land is suitable for growing crops. That combination means food production must extract the maximum value from limited agricultural land while using as little energy, water, fertilizer and other inputs as possible. Two near-term Technology Innovation Institute developments illustrated the opportunity. The first is a bio-based soil additive, planned for commercial launch toward the end of the year, designed to hold irrigation water in sandy soil so plants can draw on it over roughly twenty-four hours. Hart said it is made from materials such as old tree matter and releases natural fertilizer as it releases water, producing more crop for less water and therefore less desalination energy. The second is a ceramic desalination membrane, expected to go to market by the end of next year, intended to replace polymer membranes, last twenty years, and allow more water through for the same pressure. The discussion then moved from inventions to Abu Dhabi’s research-to-commercialisation model. Hart described TII as a government-funded agency that also undertakes private research, with most funding coming from the Department of Finance. Because scientists do not need to spend large amounts of time writing proposals, teams can move from idea to prototype in weeks rather than the year to eighteen months Hart associated with university funding cycles. Once work reaches pre-commercial stage, sister company VentureOne can spin up a venture, creating a route for external investors to back commercial products emerging from TII research.