Sky Kurtz, CEO of Pure Harvest, on food security and sustainable farming

Coming from a humble background, Sky Kurtz, CEO and Co-founder of Pure Harvest Smart Farms, built a lucrative career in private equity. He then reevaluated priorities and became a serial entrepreneur, most recently pioneering sustainable agriculture in the United Arab Emirates. With a focus on innovative cultivation systems in harsh natural environments, Kurtz shares insights into the convergence of sustainability, agriculture, and the crucial role of water in securing our future.    

How does sustainability align with your strategy?  

Sustainability is foundational both to our company’s vision and to our business strategy. Pure Harvest is unique in that we are actually an energy company, taking sunlight and converting it into calories as efficiently as possible, seeking to achieve the maximum output per unit of useful photonic energy, while minimizing the capital and resources needed to do so. 

We use technology to make resource-efficient food production possible, making us more sustainable. This is something we can be proud of, and it’s a value our consumers increasingly care about. We see sustainability as a source of competitive advantage: to reduce the need for fertilizer or chemical pesticides, for example, we're using technology and renewable resources like natural predators to improve the health and quality of our food, at once benefiting the planet and our profitability. 

What do you see as the most important opportunity to focus on in the sustainability space?  

There is a tremendous focus on carbon today, and rightfully so; however, sustainability is also about food, water and waste, and carbon’s role in climate change is negatively affecting all of the above. In terms of both scale and urgency, water is the most important, and ultimately water is food, as roughly two-thirds of the world's freshwater is used in food production. 

Without enough potable water and water-efficient farming methods, we will have widespread famine and disaster. These problems aren't well understood or talked about, but I think they will become a louder and louder siren, drawing attention to ramifications for national security, food supply, trade policy and economics, and fundamentally both the quality and sustainability of life itself. 

How are you involving stakeholders in your sustainability efforts?  

We're engaging every stakeholder that will listen to drive a compelling and clear narrative on how solutions like ours can be part of the future of food. Last year, we onboarded Dr. Josef Schmidhuber as Chief Sustainability Officer, who carries a Nobel Prize for his work which helped to make climate change a household topic. He is now developing our first-ever sustainability report, to make sure we’re in line with international standards and that we can credibly demonstrate a healthy ESG record to our many stakeholders.  

Being part of the solution at the government level at home is also important to us, and we’ve done our best to support the UAE’s vision and goals for sustainability. I was part of the delegation of Her Excellency Mariam Almheiri, the former UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment, at COP26 where the UAE earned the privilege of hosting COP28. I’ve also had the opportunity to serve as a member of a national committee focused on the adoption of agritech for food security, promulgating solutions and shaping policies for more sustainable food production in the UAE.  

How are you fostering innovation in sustainability?

In 2016, one of our co-founders, Robert Kupstas, was working with the International Renewable Energy Agency and looking at water saving solutions for the Middle East. When he saw that we use roughly two thirds of our freshwater to farm less than 15% of our food in the GCC, he realized that to solve the water security problem, you also had to solve the food production problem. His idea was to build bridging technologies to reinvent proven, large-scale greenhouse solutions in the GCC’s challenging climates.  

Since then, we’ve continued to innovate. Currently, we’re developing AI tools that make food production more efficient by automating climate management and improving our yield forecasts– tools we plan to offer to other farmers in the future. We also innovate in ways that might seem simple at first, but have a huge potential impact. For example, in a partnership with Nadec, a large dairy producer in Saudi Arabia, we co-located our farms with a 30-megawatt solar power installation. Our collective power demand is large enough to enabIe utility-scale solar deployment. 

In what other areas do you see sustainability-related opportunities?  

Enacting new government regulations is a valuable opportunity to facilitate sustainable development – but we’re very lucky to operate in one of the most forward-thinking government environments. The European Commission’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is a great example of a regulatory innovation that reduces emissions by leveling the playing field of domestic carbon policies so local companies are not disadvantaged. 

Financial innovation is also key. Emerging markets will need tools and services to develop and trade carbon credits and provide rigorous auditing and carbon accounting, and to then support companies to sell carbon credits in global markets so they can access capital. I think these private market companies will be necessary to make possible a carbon market that will function at scale across every sector.  

There is also a lot of space for innovation in food waste, which is estimated at between 17% and 33%, globally. I think innovations in logistics and cold storage will go a long way to reduce waste, and in turn reduce the amount we need to produce. 

Finally, alternative proteins hold a lot of promise. For example, precision fermentation is a novel solution wherein microorganisms like yeast are engineered to produce specific proteins, such as those found in meat or dairy. It holds promise as an alternative protein solution due to its efficiency, sustainability, and potential to address environmental and ethical concerns associated with traditional animal agriculture.