As the doors open for Gulfood 2022, one of the most significant and largest F&B oriented events in the world, it’s time to consider the future of the industry and how we can continue to make progress and headway into what is undoubtedly amongst one of the most rapidly changing industries.
I’ve been a career entrepreneur in the F&B sector with multiple ventures for almost two decades. Over the course of my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve seen many changes; largely positive, but with some drawbacks from time to time. There are so many varying elements behind the F&B sector, ranging from supply chains, logistics, health and safety, regulations, and of course, technology.
From my experience, the real evolution of the F&B sector has been in the implementation of technology.
Technology, by its very nature, is innovative and game-changing as a standalone sector, but when you start to apply technological advancements to other sectors, you see an increase in innovation and thus, progression. This absolutely applies to the F&B sector and sub-sectors such as agriculture and now, agritech, which directly impacts the industry.
If examining the entire food industry from a macro level, the agriculture sector is changing at accelerated rates and before long it will no longer be recognisable from what it once was – and that, by all accounts, is a positive statement. The integration of technology into agriculture and thus the creation of an entirely new sub-sector, agritech, is definitively causing a dynamic change to the entire F&B sector, one aspect at a time.
Where and when they can, contemporary companies are adopting modern practices and are rapidly altering towards agritech, leaving traditional agriculture behind. This is certainly the case with various UAE companies that the Khalifa Fund has supported and collaborated with.
Technology’s role in F&B industry
Within the UAE’s ecosystem, we’ve supported a number of impressively innovative businesses that are helping to shape the agritech industry and to place the UAE’s agritech sector amongst the most forward-thinking and advanced in the world.
Amongst some of these companies that we’ve worked with are Pure Harvest Farms, who are implementing technological practices by developing and operating climate-controlled farms to grow a diverse range of crops, Circa Biotech, an extremely innovative company that uses Black Soldier Fly (BSF) to process organic waste and to produce high-quality protein for animal feed.
Another company the Khalifa Fund has supported is CODE Three Fourteen, who are at this year’s edition of Gulfood, displaying their use of AI and autonomous drones to solve global problems, transform industries, increase productivity, and serve the needs of the human species. CODE’s agritech services include drone pollination, infested trees detection, crop monitoring, crop management, irrigation mapping, land and soil surveys and agronomic reports; a proud Khalifa Fund company that I foresee being industry leaders and placing the UAE’s agritech market amongst the most competitive in a global market.
Amongst our other Gulfood participants are a wealth of innovative and proactive UAE companies in the F&B space, such as: Liwa Dates, Liwa Gate Food Industries, Hunter Foods, Maamil Nahel Foodstuff Establishment, Overseas for Water, Mass Popcorn and Chips, and All About Coffee. All companies and concepts that Khalifa Fund is proud to support while they strive to revolutionise our F&B sector.
Supporting these innovative people and their brilliant concepts today is what will result in a fruitful tomorrow. We already have a well-established framework for entrepreneurs to succeed in our entrepreneurial ecosystem, this being well-exampled by the UAE gaining the first ranked spot in the Global Entrepreneurship Index 2022.
Now it’s time to ensure that our talent in the F&B, agriculture and agritech sectors alike all benefit from the foundations that have been laid as a result of the commitments of our leadership’s directives to make the UAE’s entrepreneurial ecosystem the best in the world.
