Summary
Key Points
Significant cost advantages can be gained by reducing the use of non- renewable and limited resources such as oil and fresh water. By employing solar desalination technology, Sundrop Farms has created an agricultural system that is both profitable and environmentally sustainable.
The focus of food security planning in the Middle East has been on grains and maximising calorific value. Solar desalination technology is not yet cost effective for broadacre grain cultivation. At the core of regional food security goals, however, is a desire to maximise nutritional value and greenhouse technology has a lot to offer the region in this area.
The Sundrop Farms technology can be adapted to be less technology intensive to suit developing countries; however for successful implementation a well-developed retail chain is necessary to enable production to occur at sufficient economies of scale.
Sundrop Farms has developed technologies to responsibly grow crops in some of the world’s

driest regions, using abundant renewable resources – seawater and sunlight. The Sundrop
Farms SystemTM harnesses the sun’s energy to desalinate seawater to produce freshwater
for irrigation, produce electricity to power its greenhouse and provide the energy to heat
and cool its greenhouse. The Port Augusta farm is now moving beyond its pilot phase to
undertake a twenty hectare glasshouse expansion that will be completed in mid-2015.