Through RockSource Group, Brad Warwick-Browne is focusing on soil health and regenerative agriculture to strengthen the UAE’s domestic food production.
While the UAE invests heavily in vertical farms, hydroponics and AI-powered greenhouses, Brad Warwick-Browne is focused on a less visible part of the country’s food-production challenge: the soil.
Through RockSource Group, Warwick-Browne is promoting the use of natural minerals to improve soil health, water retention and nutrient efficiency. The approach is aimed at helping agriculture operate more effectively in difficult growing conditions, including the UAE’s sandy soils.
The idea is relatively simple. High-tech farming can control temperature, humidity, irrigation and light, but much of the country’s agriculture still depends on what happens beneath the surface.
Looking Beyond Controlled Environments
The UAE has invested heavily in agricultural technology as it works to strengthen domestic food production.
Controlled-environment agriculture can reduce the limitations created by the country’s climate, but Warwick-Browne argues that it cannot replace conventional agriculture entirely.
“Controlled environments are a huge part of the answer, and we back them completely,” he says. “But no glasshouse is going to grow the country’s wheat, its fodder, or its dates.”
His focus is therefore on improving the growing conditions outside those controlled environments, while also supplying materials that can be used in greenhouses and nurseries.
RockSource’s principal product, Acadia, is a natural mineral that the company says can help retain nutrients in the root zone and make them more available to plants.
The intended result is greater nutrient efficiency, particularly in soils where water and fertiliser can be lost quickly.
A Move From Health to Agriculture
Warwick-Browne’s route into agriculture came through the health and wellness sector.
Since 2022, he has worked in the UAE’s supplements market and helped build a regional brand from an early-stage operation into a business with a presence across more than 100 retail locations.
That experience shaped his interest in the relationship between food production and human health.
“The biggest driver of our health is the food we eat,” he says. “At some point you have to ask why so many of us are requiring medical intervention.”
He argues that improving food quality requires attention not only to what is placed on supermarket shelves, but also to how crops are grown.
That has led him towards regenerative agriculture and soil management, although claims about changes in nutritional quality and chemical exposure require careful interpretation because crop nutrient levels vary considerably by crop, variety, soil, farming practices and measurement methods.
What the Mineral Trials Found
RockSource says trials involving its mineral have produced promising results.
A University of Reading trial on spring wheat found that yields increased by 20% under one application scenario, while another trial maintained yields using 40% less fertiliser. Laboratory tests reported by the company also recorded reductions in nitrous oxide emissions, ammonia losses and phosphate leaching.
The reported reductions were 80% for nitrous oxide, 75% for ammonia and 58% for phosphate leaching in laboratory column experiments.
These findings are particularly relevant to agriculture in arid environments, where water efficiency and nutrient retention can have a significant impact on production costs and crop establishment.
However, laboratory results and individual crop trials do not automatically translate into the same outcomes across commercial farms. Larger field trials across different crops, soils, and climates are needed to establish how consistently the technology performs.
Why Soil Matters in the UAE
The UAE’s agricultural sector faces constraints that are difficult to overcome through conventional farming alone.
Much of the country’s natural soil is sandy, with limited capacity to retain water and nutrients. Farmers therefore rely heavily on irrigation, fertilisers and controlled growing conditions.
Improving the ability of soil or growing media to retain nutrients could reduce some of those losses.
That has applications beyond food crops. The same principle is relevant to tree planting, landscaping and wider land-restoration programmes.
Warwick-Browne argues that the success of a greening project should not be measured simply by how many trees are planted.
“Anyone can plant a tree. It is about whether that tree is alive in three years,” he says.
For large-scale planting programmes, improving early root development and plant establishment could therefore become an important part of the equation.
Linking Agriculture With Regional Greening
The UAE is also positioning itself as a centre for wider regional climate and sustainability initiatives.
The Middle East Green Initiative, for example, includes an ambition to plant 50 billion trees across the region.
For Warwick-Browne, soil improvement could support those efforts by increasing the chances that newly planted vegetation survives beyond its initial establishment period.
That places his work at the intersection of several priorities for the region: food security, water efficiency, land restoration and agricultural productivity.
From Local Experiments to a Regional Business
Warwick-Browne’s ambition extends beyond using the mineral in the UAE.
He wants the country to become a base from which RockSource can expand its agricultural technology across other markets, particularly countries where soil degradation, water scarcity and fertiliser efficiency are major concerns.
He is also due to speak at GrowTech Middle East in Dubai on regenerative agriculture and the development of commercially viable business models.
For RockSource, that commercial question may ultimately be as important as the science.
Improving soil is a long-term proposition, and farmers need evidence that an input can deliver measurable improvements in yield, input efficiency or profitability before adopting it at scale.
The UAE offers a useful testing ground because its agricultural challenges are unusually pronounced.
Can the Desert Produce More?
The UAE has already demonstrated how far engineering and investment can change what is possible in an arid environment.
The next challenge is making food production more resource-efficient while maintaining yields.
Warwick-Browne’s approach starts at ground level.
Rather than seeing soil as a limitation that technology must simply work around, he is betting that improving the soil itself can become part of the solution.
After six years in the UAE, he sees the country’s agricultural ambitions as another opportunity to challenge conventional assumptions about what can be produced in the desert.
“This country took a desert and built one of the great cities of the world,” he says. “Growing its own food is the next thing people said could not be done.”
For RockSource, the proposition is that the future of UAE agriculture may depend not only on what happens above the ground, but on getting more from what lies beneath it.
