October 29, 2019 — Tucked away in Masdar City, a quiet planned neighborhood in the emirate of Abu Dhabi that combines earth-tone Arabic architecture with wind turbines and other innovative technology, is a cluster of container-style buildings.

These containers are the site of Madar Farms, co-founded by Abdulaziz Al Mulla, a Kuwaiti entrepreneur now based in the United Arab Emirates. Al Mulla began getting interested in food security while at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., where he worked with several of the region’s governments addressing a variety of national risk challenges. He left McKinsey after one particu