How To Start A Vertical Farm in Malaysia

How to Start a Vertical Farm in Malaysia

Rooftop Farming, Urban Farming or City Farming has become a trend here in Malaysia. Many of the communities in every town are setting up small edible gardens as a community service project or some call it CSP. Building farms in the cities helps in greening the areas we lived in.

What is Urban Vertical Farming?

Vertical farming is one of the most practice in the urban farming communities. As the word indicates vertical farming means we farm our vegetables vertically. It’s a trending concept where we are creating standing farms or standing gardens for vegetables to grow on a vertical space. Most of the conventional farmers grow on the horizontal space, which throughout the years of intensive farming and deforestation for farming activities, agricultural land become more and more scarce, in conjunction with many more land exploration for mega projects on plantation, let alone real estate development

Hydroponics or Aquaponics in Malaysia

Hydroponics or Aquaponics farming techniques is getting more and more popular here in Malaysia especially in the urban areas. With the industry popularity on the rise, the demand for all natural growing is on the soar as well, many people love the concept of hydroponics but synthetic derived AB nutrients are not in favour, they would prefer something to do with natural derived. That’s where they moved to aquaponics, using fish and plants to build a close loop ecosystem, however those who have done aquaponics before, they know very well it’s not as easy, simple as portrait on the internet. There’s a must on the fundamentals and principles of aquaponics before one ventured into and to be come a master of it requires lots of patients, skills and research.

That’s where HydroOrganics or AeroOrganics comes into play.

What is HydroOrganics or AeroOrganics

HydroOrganics or AeroOrganics, Organic Hydroponics Organic Aeroponics is another form of Bioponics.

According to Maximum Yield Definition – What does Bioponics mean?

Bioponics is a method of hydroponic growing coined by hydroponics veteran William Texier, the founder of General Hydroponics Europe. It involves the use of organic nutrients in a hydroponic solution along with a substrate. It provides an alternative to hydroponic growing with synthetic fertilizers, and it’s been catching on as more and more growers enjoy the challenge of combining growing techniques in the search for healthier, tastier results.

Bioponics is related to hydroponics, but focuses on the use of completely organic nutrients. It has been around since 2005, when Texier patented the process.

MaximumYield explains Bioponics

Bioponics is a hybrid of hydroponics and organics that involves the use of organic nutrient in a hydroponic solution along with a substrate, or even just bare roots. With bioponics, it is possible to grow organic produce using hydroponic technologies.

While plants might have evolved to use soil in their growth, they do not actually need it, so long as there is adequate water provided, and the right nutrients are available. There are several growing methods that remove soil from the equation, including hydroponics and aquaponics. A newer derivative of these systems, bioponics is also soilless. However, bioponics delivers substantially better nutrition to plants than is possible with either of the other methods.

Bioponics delivers many different ways to achieve higher nutrient levels within an aquatic growing environment. For instance, in an aquaponics system, nutrients are provided almost exclusively by fish waste and fish food. In hydroponics, nutrients are added by hand to the mix. With bioponics, an organic environment is created by the application of high levels of nutrients. In turn, this attracts beneficial microbes to the growing area, which colonize plant roots and boost both nutrition and the plants’ ability to extract nutrients.

The result is a very rich growing environment that combines the benefits of both organic farming and hydroponic gardening. However, fish are optional – they are not required for an operating bioponic system. The primary benefits of this type of gardening include a reduction in water usage, crop growth is improved, and no chemical fertilizers or pesticides are needed.

Organic Aeroponics Vertical Farming in Malaysia?

Urban Vertical Farming has become necessary due to the fact of community awareness on the toxicity and harmful effects on pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, growth hormones, artificial colouring, and etc. Due to the fact of food miles which contributes part of the carbon footprint, emission of carbon dioxide CO2. Due to the fact on deforestation for intensive farming or plantations, the ecology

The communities are indeed in search of freshly harvest directly from farm to table. The demand for organic, all natural, fresh vegetables is on the rise but due to the fact of expensive pricing to consume organic vegetables. The communities started to grown their own, sharing the produce and knowledge which leads to community farming

Because we are optimising the unused, untapped vertical space and reduce land space to grow edible greens or vegetable. As the saying goes “The Sky Is The Limit.” So if we can grow upward, we are definitely producing at least 6x to 10x more produce with using minimum land space. That makes so much sense. Think about it, builders build condominiums or high rise building to cater for the rise of urban population. So why not vertical farming? Why don’t we urban farmers use this untapped unused vertical space to grow 10x more produce on a small area, in which we can multiply exponentially with more land space?

Example, VictoryFarm@Rooftop Malaysia

VictoryFarm@Rooftop Malaysia is the first and only leading rooftop farm in Malaysia, located at Jelutong Penang, situated on a rooftop of a shop lot at Nova Business Centre. The size of the farm is only 1200 square feet, but we are capable of producing one hundred and twenty 120 heads of lettuces per square feet, and that’s equivalent to fourteen thousands 14,000 to fifteen thousands 15,000 heads of lettuces, factoring walking idles and alternating the vertical towers

Vertical Urban Farming with soil is impossible due to the many issues. But with Hydroponic or Aeroponic soilesss cultivation technique, yes, we can do wonders and mass production with all year growing. It is also because we have developed Vertical Farming Systems to automated the entire growing process, therefore we have reduced or took away the maintenance or problems most farmers could possibly faced with doing soil cultivation. Because it is a system we have developed and therefore it can be automated either fully or semi-manual. It helps reduced labor intensive to work on soil. The utilisation of land space is minimised because we are growing vertically. The water runoff is also being reduced, due to the fact that in the Vertical Farming System, we have built-in reservoirs to enable water being recycled and reused again and again, except for the part where water evaporation occurs and are used by plants’ absorption in water transportation. For this cause, we saved tonnes of water being irrigated and most are wasted down underneath earth, which constant and repetition of water drainage with long periods of time will eventually cause soil eruption, with which we will have more landslides in coming near future, and that is what is happening around the world.

The Future of Vertical Farming in Malaysia

VictoryFarm@Rooftop Malaysia foresees the future of urban farming will become an impact on green initiatives, because more and more innovation on plug & grow systems will be flooding the market and because this industry is still very new and niched. VictoryFarm@Rooftop Malaysia is leading the way and have always initiated their dream of creating POCKET FARMS in every communities, so that the residences, in their communities, can access to fresh organic vegetables directly from POCKET FARMS to their tables without the use of chemical pesticides, though grown in systems but replication of naturally growing in technologies, which help improves the lives of humanity.

Want A Vertical Farming System? Contact Us Now

Visit www.victoryfarmatrooftop.com

Stay tune with us, as we will cover more and more topics as below:

Why HydroOrganics or AeroOrganics?

Where can we grow? Rooftop? Carpark? Indoor? Warehouse? Container?

When can we harvest?

How long does it grow? From sprout to harvest?

How to grow vertically?

How to germinate?

What are the methods of germination?

How to automate germination?

How to automate vertical farming system?

V.F.@.R.M.

VictoryFarm@Rooftop Malaysia

VSOW – VGROW – VHARVEST. That’s why VF@RM