At NEOM we are working to create The Land of the Future. Food rests at the heart of this. Civilization has historically been dependent first and foremost on Food Security. We need to ensure that we can provide food innovatively and efficiently to match sustainable food delivery with demand. This is why we have five focus areas in our strategy: climate-proof agriculture, regenerative aquaculture, novel foods, personalized nutrition and sustainable food supply. These are essential to address the demands not only of society today, but also tomorrow.

We have set up an innovation hub and testbed where companies can develop, demonstrate and implement new sustainable food technologies and services that can be built and scaled up to improve our food systems. We have created the region’s first Food Agritech Accelerator, to give start-ups around the world the seed funding they need to fund the seeding of the world.

For the last 10,000 years, farmers were asked to do one thing – produce more food. This has now changed. Farmers today must produce not only more but even better food. We are transforming food systems by developing new agricultural and aquacultural technologies and working with our partners to do ground-breaking R&D, create novel solutions and launch their products.

NEOM will be achieving this goal first by locally producing the food that makes most environmental and economic sense, and second, by sourcing in the most sustainable way the categories of food that cannot at this time be produced in the region in a cost-efficient manner, for example because they require too much water. Through the way we grow, process, transport, distribute and consume food, NEOM will promote new approaches to enhancing our health and the environment. We want to achieve an optimal food system that can nourish both people and the planet.

We will use genomic tools in multiple ways. In aquaculture for instance, the few species that have been domesticated are not native to the Red Sea. We can use genomic information to accelerate the domestication of Red Sea species by selecting the best traits for this. For agriculture, we need new species or varieties that are adapted to drought or are salt tolerant. We will develop them using both genomic and gene-editing technologies.

We believe that using a circular approach to business is essential for sustainable development. In a circular economy, we replace the ‘end-of-life’ concept. This will open up new opportunities from strategies to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover resources and materials along the entire supply chain. This is especially important in desert environments, where organic matter should be considered a precious resource. As well as reusing and recycling packaging, will minimize food waste while maximizing the conversion of organic waste into agricultural inputs – for example, fish feed from insect protein and soil amendments to improve water retention.

Part of our mandate is to create and incentivize the consumption of alternative plant-based products – not only locally, but regionally and eventually globally. We believe that, due to climate change, we need to work on changing consumer behavior towards more sustainable meat and dairy alternatives.

Our legacy will be based on not having a legacy. We intend to redefine livability by blending cutting-edge science with a commitment to nature preservation. We’re redefining business by We have a greenfield opportunity to create sustainable green fields and aquaculture farms by digitizing all our operations and supply chains, making new ways of strengthening ESG to reimagine food supply chains to meet the standards of tomorrow.