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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: This Vertical Farm Was Born In The Pandemic. Sales Are Up
The Vegetable Co. in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, grows vegetables under LED lights in a shipping container. “We were a nascent product in an uncertain market,” one of its founders said
The Vegetable Co. in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, grows vegetables under LED lights in a shipping container. “We were a nascent product in an uncertain market,” one of its founders said.Credit...Ian Teh for The New York Times
The Vegetable Co. Sits In A Shipping Container On The Edge of A Malaysian Parking Lot. It’s One of Many Small Farms Around The World Selling Directly To Consumers.
By Ian Teh and Mike Ives
Sept. 3, 2020
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The setup of the two friends’ agricultural venture was unusual. Their farm sat next to a gas station, inside a shipping container where the plants grew in vertically stacked shelves. And the timing of their first sales — during the early days of Malaysia’s coronavirus outbreak — seemed less than ideal.
“We were a nascent product in an uncertain market,” said Shawn Ng, 28, a co-founder of the vertical farm, the Vegetable Co. “We weren’t too sure if it would take off.”
“But somehow,” he added, “the market kind of played in our favor. ”As in-person shopping wanes during the pandemic, Mr. Ng’s Malaysia-based operation is one of many small farms around the world that are selling fresh produce directly to consumers in ways that bypass brick-and-mortar grocery stores.
Some farms sell on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Lazada, Alibaba’s online emporium for Southeast Asia, or through smaller ones like Harvie, a Pennsylvania-based website that connects consumers with individual farms across the United States and Canada.
ImageShawn Ng, one of the Vegetable Co.’s founders, loaded freshly harvested produce into a car for delivery.Credit...Ian Teh for The New York Times
Others, like the Vegetable Co., sell directly to customers. “I was very ‘kan cheong’ during the lockdown period,” said one of Mr. Ng’s regular customers, Ayu Samsudin, using a Cantonese word for anxious. “Having fresh vegetables delivered to your doorstep was such a relief.”
The Vegetable Co. consists of a 320-square-foot shipping container on the edge of a parking lot in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s largest city. It opened for business, with just a handful of customers, about a month before the country’s restrictive lockdown took effect in mid-March.
Revenue grew by 300 percent in the first few weeks, and the shipping container is now approaching production capacity because of high demand, said Mr. Ng’s business partner, Sha G.P.Apart from the gas station, the shipping container’s other neighbors are a driving range and an oil palm plantation. Inside, tightly packed shelves with hydroponic lettuce, sprouts and other vegetables grow under LED lights.
Mr. Ng on a delivery run in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia has weathered the pandemic relatively well, at least compared with other Southeast Asian countries.Credit...Ian Teh for The New York Times
The wallpaper outside the growing chamber shows blue sky and clouds, evoking the view from an old-fashioned farm. But employees pace the chamber’s narrow corridor wearing rubber gloves, surgical masks and white lab coats, as if it were a hospital ward.
The founders have scant experience with traditional farming, and they speak about their work with Silicon Valley-like jargon.
Mr. Sha, who has a master’s degree in management, said he first became interested in vertical farming after watching “The Martian,” the 2015 film in which an American astronaut played by Matt Damon is stranded on Mars and learns to grow his own food.
“I was lost in awe about the degree of precision in the technology along with the elegance of the solution to grow vegetables in a zero-gravity environment,” he said. “Since then, I have gone down the rabbit hole of independent research.”
Gudrun Olafsdottir, a Kuala Lumpur resident from Iceland, said the Vegetable Co. was one of the local businesses she was supporting with a “financial hug” during the pandemic.Credit...Ian Teh for The New York Times
The coronavirus took off in Malaysia in March, after an Islamic revivalist group’s gathering there became one of the pandemic’s biggest vectors in Southeast Asia. Since then, the country of about 32 million has weathered the outbreak relatively well, at least compared with some of its neighbors. As of Thursday, it had reported fewer than 10,000 confirmed cases since the pandemic began, according to a New York Times database.
Malaysia’s initial lockdown allowed only one person per household to go outside for essential errands, and the police enforced local travel restrictions with roadblocks.
But even though the rules were gradually loosened to let most businesses reopen, many urban Malaysians have maintained the online shopping habits they developed during the initial lockdown, said Audrey Goo, the founder of MyFishman, an e-commerce platform that connects fishermen from villages along the country’s west coast with consumers in Kuala Lumpur.
Gudrun Olafsdottir, a Kuala Lumpur resident from Iceland, said the Vegetable Co. was one of the local businesses she was supporting with a “financial hug” during the pandemic.Credit...Ian Teh for The New York Times
“Not many end users are willing to go back to the wet market,” said Ms. Goo, adding that her company’s sales had roughly doubled during the pandemic. “So I think the whole business model will continue to change.”
Mr. Ng said the Vegetable Co.’s parent company, Future Farms, was now seeking seed capital to finance an expansion into a larger facility. He recently hired an architect and a software developer to design it. For now, though, the operation remains modest. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Ng climbed into his car for a delivery run that snaked through low-rise residential neighborhoods, as the sun sank below Kuala Lumpur’s hazy downtown skyline.
One of the customers on the 40-plus-mile route, Gudrun Olafsdottir, said that along with yoga and meditation, greens from the Vegetable Co. were part of a routine that helped her keep physically and mentally fit during the pandemic.
Ms. Olafsdottir, who is from Iceland and works in retail, found the farm on Facebook through a local chef who specializes in raw and vegan cooking. She said it was one of several local businesses that she was supporting these days with a “financial hug.”
“I think that we could do so many things to support those in need if we just consciously choose how we spend our time and money,” she has written on her blog. “A hug and a squeeze.”
The farm is in a 320-square-foot shipping container near a gas station, a driving range and an oil palm plantation.Credit...Ian Teh for The New York Times
Ian Teh reported from Kuala Lumpur and Mike Ives from Hong Kong.
INDIA: Indoor Farming: From Vertical Trays To Your Table Within Hours, How Veggie, Salad Market Has Gone Hyperlocal
As climate change worsens due to long-haul transportation as one of the factors, going hyperlocal on production and supply makes indoor farming a lucrative business. What are the dynamics involved?
Sep 04, 2020
As climate change worsens due to long-haul transportation as one of the factors, going hyperlocal on production and supply makes indoor farming a lucrative business. What are the dynamics involved? Check here.
Call it indoor farming, Hydroponics or vertical farming, this green nursery method is gaining popularity | Photo Credit: iStock Images
The lack of space in urban locales, people's preference for fresh vegetables that have not been tossed and battered in transit through wholesale markets, and some bit of out-of-the-box thinking has helped create businesses based on an indoor green revolution within Delhi.
A Times of India report brings one face-to-face with a number of nouveau farmers who have made thriving businesses by nursing their newly developed green fingers.
These new-age farmers are growing romaine lettuce, oak leaves, mint, kale, basil, etc in their vertical plants in urban localities like Lajpat Nagar in Delhi, etc.
Not convinced how one can grow vegetables in crowded, chaotic market areas, the TOI journalist confesses he went to the plants to verify.
Himanshu Aggarwal of 9Growers showed around his farm on the second floor of a building that houses a bank and an electronics store on floors below. His hydroponic farm houses shelves and shelves of microgreens, herbs, and leafy vegetables growing in rows of white, laboratory-like ambiance.
The indoor green revolution of soil-less farming:
There are Petri dishes that hold plants, there is artificial light and the setup has its humidity and temperature monitored and strictly controlled. This soil-less farming is called hydroponic (sustained on water and nutrients) farming, not a new idea at all, but one that is now being widely adopted.
TOI also mentions a visit to farmingV2, a hydroponic farm being run by Rohit Nagdewani in the National Capital Region. Nagdewani says that the need to follow social distancing and to get clean veggies - a demand of the precautions against the coronavirus pandemic has made people appreciate this form of produce more. People want vegetables and salads that are hyperlocal, fresh, and not loaded with pesticides or fertilizers.
What is Hydroponic farming?
Hydroponics is the art of gardening without soil. The word originates from the Latin word meaning “working water.” Instead of using soil, water is deployed to provide nutrients, hydration, and oxygen to plant life. One can grow anything from watermelons to jalapeños to orchids under the careful regimen of hydroponics. It requires very little space, 90 to 95% less water than traditional agriculture, and helps grow a garden full of fruits and flowers in half the time.
Hydroponics helps the cultivation of plants in a manner such that the yield reflects rapid growth, stronger yields, and superior quality.
When nutrients are dissolved in soil-less water beds, they can be applied directly to the plant’s root system by flooding, misting, or immersion. Since no soil is used, there are no pests and therefore no insecticide/pesticide is required. Grown in an environment that is controlled in terms of water at the plants' roots, moisture in the air, humidity in the air, ambient light (same spectrum as of sunlight) etc, the food thus grown is cleaner in physical, chemical, and biological nature.
AI-based Indoor farming will support traditional farming:
The global population is predicted to reach 9.7 billion by the year 2050 and to feed everyone, it’s estimated that global food production will need to increase by up to 70% in the next 30 years. This method will decentralize supply chains and give more business to local suppliers, thereby cutting fuel costs and carbon emissions that long-haul transportation creates.
The indoor farming technology market was valued at $23.75 billion in 2016 and is projected to reach $40.25 billion by 2022, as per a report in The Forbes. Indoor green farms may be an idea whose time has come.
The views expressed by the author are personal and do not in any way represent those of Times Network.