The pandemic has shone a light on many of the gaps that exist in the country’s economy. And one of these is the need for better food security, an issue that resonated with Gerard Lim long before Covid-19.
Many years ago, he started noticing that most of the vegetables sold in local supermarkets and grocers were not necessarily the best of quality as top grade vegetables grown here were mainly exported. That means locals were consuming lower grade vegetables.
Additionally, a lot of the vegetables that can be grown in Malaysia were, in fact, imported.
Lim wasn’t a farmer but he knew that technology could help boost quality production for local consumption and improve the local supply chain for vegetables. “My exposure and experience with farming started about five years ago, when I introduced smart farming solutions using sensors, the Internet of Things and Big Data to various farmers. But I found that many farmers in Malaysia were smallholders who could not afford the technology.
“Malaysia does not have policies to support the use of advanced technologies for smart farming, urban farming and indoor vertical farming. So, existing special grants, incentives and loans are provided for the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides for traditional farming but there are no grants, incentives and loans for the use of technology in smart farming, ” he says.
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