My first time to get involved in harvesting session whereby I get to do hands on to harvest the fresh produce and sell it to the public. Just joined the startup named Urban Farm Tech which focuses on providing urban farming solutions for the people. One of the system that we are maintaining is now ready to harvest and thus we went on to sell it on the farmers market day which is this Saturday. The turn up rate was great and there were quite a lot of visitors who came over and learned more about the system through talking to the team.
Well, I am also learning along the way while doing it. This is how I learn best and that is the most fun way to learn things as well. So there are a few takeaways:
- Gotta know the names (Malay, English, Chinese) of the vegetables and fishes. Besides knowing that, it is better to know how we usually consume. For example, we have sweet basil selling there, so we could tell the visitors that these leafy greens could do wonder in cooking Italian cuisine. There are also lots of curly kales and dinasaur kales, then this could become an ingredient for a super antioxidant juice or make it into free
- Knowing how to plant, understanding the whole growing cycle until harvest. Then, also need to know how to preserve the plants. When talking about transplanting, also need to know what's the criteria to do successful transplant as some time there will be some cases that the plant suffers from shock (like different water flow, temperature) and ended up dead.
- Know the technical knowledge of all the system available in the context. I do know some basic ones but when some visitors who really into farming asked more than my knowledge, then I was stucked. Thus, I need to keep those questions in mind and find out the answers. So much to pick up but that is really fun as I know I am learning and getting to know more about urban farming, in terms of technical side.
- Understand the economic of scale of the farming system. Also to understand the costing behind the system, which components contribute the most for the cost and also understand how is the maintenance work. These are all crucial information for the client to know before buying.
- Understand the need and behavior of the customers. B2B and B2C customers are totally different appetite entities. Personally, I do love both side but B2B would be my choice of doing the business. Nonetheless, educating the public to adopt or accept urban farming is one tough job too.
- Need to know the taste of the produce of our own before able to sell to someone else. I admit that I have yet to try enough kind of vegetables to be able to differentiate between the taste of hydroponics, aquaponics and soil farming plants. Based on the feedback or opinions from the visitors, they claimed that soil based plants have more flavor compared to others. So, again I need to know the unique selling point of the hydroponic and aquaponic plants.
- Price comparison of different vegetables as we need to position ourselves to be more awareness creation than for profit. Since the vegetables belong to the government entity, our job is to raise awareness that we could plant through urban farming solution and reduce the dependency on conventional farming. This also increase the food security with more stable food supply and better transparency in terms of fertilizer and pesticide usage.
Dr. Chong, a very passionate guy on urban farming as well! Unfortunately, I didn't get much time to spend with him to understand more about his journey on urban farming. Next time then!
Cute kids with our aquaponic outdoor system set, this is one of the biggest custom made set for a government linked company named Cyberview, the landowner of Cyberjaya.
Me helping the visitors to harvest
Me guiding the visitors to harvest
A pair that loves leafy greens
Me explaining about the system came to be. The visitor who was a C&S engineer commented that the system looks pretty ugly and why don't I as an architect should design something better. I agreed in some way that the system could be better, but there are reasons behind that my partner did that due to time and budget constraint. Nonetheless, we accept these critics with open heart and ready to make betterment to our product.
Me, @enjiliew (thanks for coming over to help me up <3), and her friend
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