From crash to course-correction

If you skim the news, it’s easy to conclude that vertical farming has flat-lined. Bowery’s shutdown, AeroFarms’ bankruptcy, Infarm’s contraction—on the surface, the narrative feels like a graveyard tour. Yet this sequence is simply the “middle act” of a pattern every transformative technology passes through: exuberance, shake-out, recalibration.

Exuberance. Around 2016–2021, money flooded in on glossy renderings and big promises, just as it did for solar startups a decade earlier and biofuels in the mid-2000s. Cheap capital, ESG mandates, and pandemic-era supply-chain fears all fanned the flames. Valuations raced ahead of fundamentals, and venture investors—trained to prize speed over precision—encouraged scale first, profitability later.

Shake-out. Reality caught up. Energy markets spiked, interest rates rose, and landlords wanted market rent. Operating expenses bled faster than projected, and growth-at-all-costs models snapped. Companies with fragile cap structures couldn’t refinance; Chapter 11 became the shortcut to balance-sheet surgery.

Recalibration. Entire greenhouse campuses, proprietary seed libraries, and AI growth recipes are trading at pennies on the dollar. Agribusiness giants, family offices, and mission-driven funds are scooping them up, layering disciplined cost controls on top of the original tech. In other words, patents and plant science have new landlords—ones who prefer EBIT to eyeballs.

This replay of history isn’t unique to farming under LEDs. Think solar: after the early-2010s collapse of Solyndra and SunEdison, remaining players slashed module costs by 90% and built a trillion-dollar industry. Think electric vehicles: Fisker folded, but lithium-ion supply chains born in that frenzy now feed every major automaker. Shake-outs don’t kill sectors; they shave off excess and force a pivot from storytelling to spreadsheets.

Vertical farming has entered that homework phase. Survivors are disciplined, energy-literate, and laser-focused on unit economics. They’re designing facilities around local grid tariffs, heat-recovery loops, and demand-driven production—not just architectural showpieces. Capital is still available, but it now comes with a spreadsheet in hand, not a hype deck. The story is no longer about how many acres can be stacked indoors; it’s about costs per kilo, kilowatt-hours per kilogram, and payback periods that fit within a CFO’s risk threshold.

The industry hasn’t imploded; it’s maturing—trading swagger for scar tissue, but also for staying power.

Why the Middle East and North Africa are poised to leapfrog

If the indoor farming industry is now entering a wiser, leaner adolescence, the Middle East and North Africa region may be the ideal place to harness this newly tempered model. In fact, MENA stands to leapfrog other regions by adopting CEA in this post-hype era – and there are several compelling reasons why.

A Strategic Necessity

First and foremost is necessity.

MENA’s climate and resource constraints make traditional agriculture challenging, and food security is a strategic concern. Many countries in the region rely heavily on imports for their food supply, leaving them vulnerable to global price swings and supply chain disruptions. For example, the United Arab Emirates imports roughly 90% of its food [1], and Saudi Arabia around 80% of its food [2]. This import dependency, coupled with arid land and water scarcity, means local farming solutions are not just nice-to-have, but essential. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when international supply chains wavered, Gulf nations were starkly reminded of their food insecurity – supermarket shelves would be empty if imports stopped for even a few days. Vertical farming and CEA offer a chance to produce food locally, year-round, and with minimal water, insulating MENA countries from external shocks. Indeed, modern indoor farms can use up to 95% less water than traditional farming for the same output [1] – a game-changer in one of the most water-scarce regions on earth. By embracing CEA, MENA nations can turn their climate challenge into an opportunity, growing crops in sealed environments unaffected by desert heat or drought.

The Second-Mover Advantage

Secondly, MENA has the advantage of learning from others’ mistakes without having borne as much of the cost of those mistakes.

Compared to the U.S. or Europe, the Middle East’s vertical farming industry is still nascent – it can skip the “hype” phase and go straight to the “optimized” phase. Governments and entrepreneurs in the region are keenly aware of what went wrong elsewhere (from energy inefficiencies to poor crop choices), and they’re implementing CEA projects with those lessons in mind. New projects in MENA are being built for sustainability and profitability from the ground up, often supported by government initiatives that prioritize food security over quick venture-style returns. Using a more prudent approach: selecting crops that make economic sense for local markets, designing facilities with energy efficiency as a priority, and planning integration with existing food supply chains. In short, MENA vertical farms can be born mature.

MENA doesn't need to reinvent the wheel—it can choose to install the upgraded model. With the pitfalls of early adopters well documented, the region can deploy best-in-class CEA systems from the outset, avoiding costly missteps and optimizing for local realities from day one.

Thanks to support and vision from its leadership, the MENA region is being positioned as a leader in the next chapter of indoor farming, with some nations explicitly folding the practice into their development agendas. With strong investor capital and a willingness to embrace innovative solutions, MENA can deploy CEA at scale, but more judiciously than the first movers did.

Unparalleled Urban and Land Opportunities

Finally, MENA offers two distinct advantages that densely farmed regions like Western Europe cannot: the opportunity to integrate agriculture into new urban developments, and the availability of vast, non-arable land suitable for large-scale projects.

First, the GCC countries are still experiencing a construction boom, with entirely new cities, malls, and urban districts being built. This presents a unique chance to embed vertical farms into the urban fabric from day one. Rather than retrofitting an old warehouse to grow lettuce (as many first-wave U.S. startups did), developers in MENA can plan high-rises, housing complexes, and shopping centers that come with in-house farms. Whether incorporated directly into buildings or established on nearby land, these facilities can deliver ultra-fresh produce directly to consumers with virtually zero transport cost or delay. This results in hyper-local “farm-to-table” supply chains at the scale of a city—something much easier to achieve in new, master-planned developments than in legacy urban infrastructure. This not only improves food security and freshness but also reduces the carbon footprint of food by eliminating the need to fly in greens from Europe or truck vegetables across countries.

In summary, MENA’s confluence of need, capital, political will, clean-slate urbanization, and abundant non-arable land makes it especially fertile ground for the next generation of indoor farming. By leveraging CEA in this new phase—pragmatic, efficient, and integrated—the region has a chance to become a global leader in sustainable food production.

Where GreenForges Digs In

After watching first-generation vertical farms struggle with rent, power bills, and delivery trucks, we asked a simple question: Can we sidestep those constraints from the start? The answer led us downward—into the literal ground and into the very footprints of the buildings we already occupy.

Turning liabilities into assets

Conventional indoor farms build or lease big, boxy warehouses that fight outdoor heat, cold, and humidity 24/7. We instead opt to drill modular “forges” beneath new or existing structures. Down there, the soil provides:

• Free real estate. No bidding wars with tenants; our growing space is geologic.
• Geothermal calm. Sub-surface temperatures hover near the local annual average, slashing HVAC loads.
• Proximity of customers. Produce rides an elevator, not a highway, reaching diners in minutes instead of days.

From salad brand to silent infrastructure

The first wave tried to build national lettuce labels. We’re not chasing supermarket shelf space; we’re providing in-house agriculture as an amenity. Whether under a hotel, a high-rise, or a mall, our Plant Forges converts unused vertical geology into fresh-food production that lifts property value, ESG scores, and tenant satisfaction.

How an underground, on-site model wins

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A technology partner, not a trucking company

By embedding farms where the demand already lives, GreenForges shifts the economic equation from tonnes shipped to square metres activated. We collaborate with developers, city planners, and hospitality companies—aligning our revenue with their occupancy rates, not with volatile commodity markets. The result is an indoor-farming platform tuned for strong unit economics, lower climate impact, and true urban resilience—exactly what the post-hype era, and the MENA region in particular, now demand.

Cultivating a Resilient Future in MENA and Beyond

Nowhere is this more exciting than in the Middle East, where the alignment of necessity, resources, and innovation can allow this approach to truly bloom. And we believe that MENA’s entrepreneurs and policymakers have a chance to leverage this new underground farming technology to its fullest potential.

We envision cities in the Gulf, North Africa, and beyond where new residential and commercial developments come with farms producing beneath them, where fresh produce is grown in the very communities that consume it, and where food security is bolstered by design. It’s a future where agriculture is not separate from urban life, but a part of it. In such a future, the Middle East could transform from a food import-dependent region into a model of self-sufficiency, showcasing how technology and thoughtful planning can overcome even the harshest climates - potentially disrupting not just CEA but also how cities are planned and managed worldwide.

This is why GreenForges’s focus is gazing towards MENA, and in the months and years to come you can expect us to announce new endeavors in the region - as we quietly and patiently plant the seeds of a new urban farming paradigm.

Sources:

[1] Fast Company Middle East. (2024). Are vertical farms the only way to future-proof agriculture in the Middle East?

[2] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service. (2023). Saudi Arabia: Food and Agricultural Import Regulations and Standards Country Report.

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