Daily Management Review

Vertical Farming Steals The International Design Award


08/31/2015


The vertical farming design of International Sky Urban Solutions bagged the “International Design Award”.



The prestigious International Design Award has been awarded to Sky Urban Solutions’ vertical farming device which has been a “home-grown” technique. As compared to “traditional farming methods” this new invention allows the farmers to “grow 10 times as many vegetables” over same area. Sky Urban Solutions is a local company which designed the “a 9m-tall system” which has “tiers of planting troughs” which rotates around the “aluminium frame”. The invention has received its name in “biennial INDEX”.
 
There were various categories of winners which included “Body, Home, Work, Play & Learning, and Community”; all the category winners were offered “€100,000” after being selected on a “wide range of criteria” whereby the companies all came up with “solutions to some of the world's major challenges”. The innovation of Sky Urban Solution formed part of “1,123 nominations” that came from seventy two countries from all over the world. The award contenders had to work around the theme of “Design to Improve Life” whereby they designed a number of things like “a cooling cap” which would chemotherapy patients can prevent their hair loss, drone ambulances, leaves made by the humans capable of generating oxygen along with a revolutionary suit to protect the Ebola workers from the disease.
 
The award has been won by Singapore candidate for the first time. The farming stack of Sky Urban Solutions has a “water-pulley system” which collects rainwater in an underground reservoir and uses it to turn the troughs in order to distribute “uniform amount of sunlight” to all plants. Later on the same rainwater gets used for crop irrigation.
 
After the first development of a system in the year of 2010, Sky Urban Solutions came “a long way” till date. The farm under the organisation measures up to “1,000 vertical farming towers” which gives “800kg of greens” products like “Chinese cabbage, nai bai and xiao bai cai” on a daily basis. The vegetable grown in this manner are “thought to be fresher” as daily the products are harvested and within four hours of being harvest, reach the local market. The vegetables that are imported reach in “three days to three weeks” times to its destination.
 
The Strait Times reports that:
“Sky Greens vegetables are available at selected FairPrice supermarkets. A 200g packet of Sky Greens xiao bai cai costs $1.25, while a 250g bag of Pasar brand xiao bai cai from a traditional farm in Singapore costs 80 cents”.
 
The vertical farming design is the farming future and is rapidly gaining popularity across the globe. Moreover, the prize wined by Sky Urban Solutions only reinforces the same, whereby Mr. Ng of the organisation says:
"...this award means more people will know about us and our system. It helps build credibility, especially when meeting with overseas partners”.
 
Talking about the inspiration behind such development, Mr. Ng remarks:
"When I planned for retirement, I wanted to become a farmer. But I saw how farmers led such a tough life here, so I thought I should improve the farming process."
 
Moreover, AVA states:
"Given Singapore's limited land resources with its various competing needs, it is important for the Republic to intensify agriculture land use, and to raise the productivity and capability of our farms."
References:
The Straits Time