One of the trends that has picked up during the pandemic is, perhaps, an interest in urban farming.
As consumers found it a little more difficult to get certain food items at the grocers – and also with time on their hands as they stayed home – they started looking into possibly growing their own food. Marcus Tan and Andy Ng thought the same.
“I used to visit the supermarket every three days to get my vegetable supply during the movement control order. Once, I waited two hours for vegetables to arrive at the supermarket, and began to think what would happen if there was a shortage of my beloved salads, ” mulls Tan. Tan, whose primary business is in landscaping, figured it would be easy for him to diversify into planting vegetables. He researched ideas and methods to design some kind of prototype hydroponic set.
“We want to show customers that it is really easy,” says Tan. The company has invested substantially into research and development to ensure that they have sufficient data on its growing plots and seedlings to aid customer queries. They obtained a 4,000 sq ft smart greenhouse in Kampung Subang that would enable them to further refine their systems and improve vegetable and seedling selections, among other things. “Since we cannot allow our customers to use trial and error for the kits, we are building baseline data to give out to our customers. Data is very important,” Ng points out.