Cherry Tomatoes Grown in the driest desert in the world by Chilean Entreprenuer

Pietro Albert, Aricas' Entrepenuer, received the support of the Luksic Foundation's Impulso Chileno program to launch an ambituous project; to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in the Atacama desert, the driest desert in the world.
One of the biggest difficulties he faced when developing the project was the scarcity of water in the area. However, once the study was conducted, he came to conlusion that up to 3,800 kg of cherry tomatoes could be planted on 126m2 using only one third of water required in the drip irrigation system, condensing the water that is in the air.

The entrepeneur swayed the jury of Impulso Chileno and became one of the big winners of the first edition. He received funding to develop his project and training with the UC School of Management. The mentoring helped them to better focus on their business. Furthermore they were also able to make the complete investment, which gave them the possibility of having 350m2 of cherry tomato cultivation in greenhouses, hence taking care of their investment and reduce the pesticides and chemical usage.

Pietro mentioned that it was a difficult year and half of the work where they had face many challenges, such as the social crisis there was in Chile starting in October 18 of last year and health crisis with the corona virus outbreak. there were various times they couldn't bring equipment from Santiago and many increases in price materials. Despite everything, their team managed to reach out their goal, which they call Hidrodestierto SPA. Today they are growing 240 seedling of cherry omatoes and they are already succesfully selling all of their production.