{"id":140669,"date":"2022-06-16T03:02:20","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T08:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/meet-the-high-tech-urban-farmer-growing-vegetables-inside-hong-kongs-skyscrapers"},"modified":"2022-06-16T03:02:20","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T08:02:20","slug":"meet-the-high-tech-urban-farmer-growing-vegetables-inside-hong-kongs-skyscrapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/meet-the-high-tech-urban-farmer-growing-vegetables-inside-hong-kongs-skyscrapers","title":{"rendered":"Meet The High-Tech Urban Farmer Growing Vegetables Inside Hong Kong\u2019s Skyscrapers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/meet-the-high-tech-urban-farmer-growing-vegetables-inside-hong-kongs-skyscrapers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fhb.gov.hk\/download\/press_and_publications\/otherinfo\/110318_food_supply_faq\/e_food_supply_faq.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.fhb.gov.hk\/download\/press_and_publications\/otherinfo\/110318_food_supply_faq\/e_food_supply_faq.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" aria-label=\"More than 90%\">More than 90%<\/a> of the skyscraper-studded city\u2019s food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. \u201cDuring the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables is very low,\u201d says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farm66.com\/en\/home\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.farm66.com\/en\/home\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" aria-label=\"Farm66\">Farm66<\/a> in Hong Kong. \u201cThe social impact was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tam estimates that only about 1.5% of vegetables in the city are locally produced. <strong> <\/strong>But he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the help of modern technologies, such as IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong\u2019s local food production\u2014and export its know-how to other cities. \u201cVertical farming is a good solution because vegetables can be planted in cities,\u201d says Tam in an interview at the company\u2019s vertical farm in an industrial estate. \u201cWe can grow vegetables ourselves so that we don\u2019t have to rely on imports.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tam says he started Farm66 in 2013 with his cofounder Billy Lam, who is COO of the company, as a high-tech vertical farming pioneer in Hong Kong. \u201cOur company was the first to use energy-saving LED lighting and wavelength technologies in a farm,\u201d he says. \u201cWe found out that different colors on the light spectrum help plants grow in different ways. This was our technological breakthrough.\u201d For example, red LED light will make the stems grow faster, while blue LED light encourages plants to grow larger leaves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded city\u2019s food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. \u201cDuring the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai","category-space","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}