Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming firm Farm66, desires to indicate that agriculture, mixed with know-how, has a promising future in cities, deserts and even in outer area.
In early February, residents of Hong Kong—an Asian monetary hub house to 7.4 million individuals—confronted a scarcity of recent meals. Cabinets stocking greens and the like had been empty throughout supermarkets within the metropolis as strict Covid-19 controls throughout the border in mainland China badly disrupted recent meals provides.
Hong Kong, a densely populated metropolis the place agriculture area is proscribed, is nearly completely depending on the surface world for its meals provide. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded metropolis’s meals, particularly recent produce like greens, is imported, largely from mainland China. “Throughout the pandemic, all of us observed that the productiveness of domestically grown greens may be very low,” says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming firm Farm66 in Hong Kong. “The social impression was large.”
Tam estimates that solely about 1.5% of greens within the metropolis are domestically produced. However he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the assistance of contemporary applied sciences, corresponding to IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong’s native meals manufacturing—and export its know-how to different cities. “Vertical farming is an efficient resolution as a result of greens may be planted in cities,” says Tam in an interview on the firm’s vertical farm in an industrial property. “We are able to develop greens ourselves in order that we do not have to depend on imports.”
Tam says he began Farm66 in 2013 along with his cofounder Billy Lam, who’s COO of the corporate, as a high-tech vertical farming pioneer in Hong Kong. “Our firm was the primary to make use of energy-saving LED lighting and wavelength applied sciences in a farm,” he says. “We discovered that totally different colours on the sunshine spectrum assist vegetation develop in several methods. This was our technological breakthrough.” For instance, pink LED gentle will make the stems develop quicker, whereas blue LED gentle encourages vegetation to develop bigger leaves.
Farm66 additionally makes use of IoT sensors and robots for high quality management and to assist handle the 20,000-square-foot indoor farm, which assist the corporate recruit and retain staff. “A giant drawback for conventional farming is the shortage of expertise,” says Tam. “It’s as a result of the youngsters of many remaining farmers don’t need to take over the farms. They assume it’s a really tedious job.”
“However by utilizing know-how, we are able to enhance the working setting in order that younger individuals can be prepared to farm,” he says. Farm66 at the moment employs 15 full-time staff, together with knowledge analysts, meals scientists and mechanical engineers, producing as much as seven tons of greens a month.
It was Farm66’s use of know-how, particularly its knowledge analytics on gentle depth, water circulate and air con, that attracted ParticleX, a tech-focused enterprise capital agency in Hong Kong backed by billionaire Tang Yiu. “I respect that Gordon and his group had accomplished numerous knowledge analytics on the farming mechanism,” says Mingles Tsoi, chief exploration officer of ParticleX. “In order that’s why we picked them as our main goal for funding.”
Farm66’s different buyers embrace the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Hong Kong government-backed Cyberport and Singapore billionaire Robert Ng’s Hong Kong property developer Sino Group. To date, it has raised greater than $4 million in whole funding.
Earlier this 12 months, Farm66 additionally acquired funding from the Chinese language authorities’s Hengqin Monetary Funding and was accepted into HK Tech 300 Angel Fund, a startup help program by Metropolis College of Hong Kong (the place cofounder Lam earned a bachelor’s diploma in utilized chemistry). Final 12 months, the corporate made the inaugural Forbes Asia 100 to Watch listing, which highlights notable small corporations and startups on the rise throughout the Asia-Pacific area.
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“A extra sustainable consumption habits is to devour domestically.”
Farm66 grows leafy greens, herbs and fruits aquaponically—a sustainable agricultural method during which vegetation are grown utilizing vitamins from fish waste as an alternative of business fertilizer. The vegetation, in flip, filter the water during which the fish dwell, making a self-regulating indoor ecosystem.
The corporate packages the produce on the market to supermarkets, lodges and high-end retail shops. Farm66 additionally just lately acquired inquiries from colleges and personal organizations to assist develop their very own meals in kitchens and small areas. “We offer farm-to-table methods to organizations in order that they will develop greens for themselves,” says Tam, who holds a grasp’s in sustainable city growth from the Hong Kong Polytechnic College. “We need to promote city farming and ESG ideas to enhance high quality of life.”
Farm66 has already labored with prime native banks. Tam provides the corporate is planning to collaborate with property builders like Sino Group, Chinachem Group and Hong Kong billionaire Lee Shau Kee’s Henderson Land Improvement to deliver its city farming methods to residential and industrial buildings, corresponding to soil-free farms powered by photo voltaic or wind power on rooftops.
“Folks will concentrate on the environmental, social and governance problems with importing one thing far-off out of your location—it’ll devour extra power and emit extra carbon,” says ParticleX’s Tsoi, who can be director and a founding member of the Hong Kong Institute of Social Impact Analysts. “A extra sustainable consumption habits is to devour domestically.”
Tam, who did his undergraduate research at Washington State College, now plans to develop Farm66 past Hong Kong and export its city farming methods and know-how to different cities. For instance, Farm66 created a cell farm from a transport container for desert cities within the Center East.
Tsoi factors to the Larger Bay Space, a Chinese language authorities plan to combine Hong Kong and the playing hub of Macau with 9 cities in southern China into one massive financial cluster, and Southeast Asia, house to a few of the world’s most densely populated cities, as potential markets for Farm66.
And like billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Tam is wanting past Earth-bound alternatives. “We’re exploring new concepts about farming in outer area,” he says. “We took the result in analysis on the way forward for farming, corresponding to rising vegetation in a zero-gravity setting.”
“Now we have numerous progressive farming concepts,” provides Tam. “We hope to assist the general public perceive that agriculture, mixed with know-how, has a promising future.”
— With help by Robert Olsen.
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