As An Urban Farm Technologist at International Greentech & Eco Product Exhibition & Conference Malaysia 2019

Excited to be up close with the Minister of MESTECC, showing what Urban Farm Tech is working on

These three days had been occupied with the iGEM 2019 which is the International Greentech’s Eco Products Exhibition & Conference Malaysia 2019 which is held in KLCC convention center. This exhibition and conference takes up 5 halls which is a medium size event where it mostly focus on b2b and g2g business. This year marks the 10th year anniversary of the event and this event is led by MESTECC under the leadership of YB Yeo Bee Yin.

Met my friend, who is also alumni of my alma mater, UTM. Currently working in MIDA

Tadaa, the infamous @orangila

Presenting to the YDP of MPSepang, which is the big boss of Sepang Council

As the representative of Urban Farm Tech, a young startup company that focuses on urban farming solution so to provide healthier lifestyle for the urbanites through appreciation and consuming real food, I am there for three days to network and getting leads for the company. This is something that I have always wanted to be in since like 5 years ago and now finally I’m like dipping into it. I see the green industry as one of the future trending industry that will thrive later on when we are in the 2020s. People start to emphasize on quality of life especially health. This relates very much to what I’m doing whereby urban farming is one of the known solution that could ensure healthy real food can be deliver to the consumers in a matter of hours as the set up are focused in the vicinity of the urbanites. Nowadays, we hardly get to taste food that is directly from the farm. Everything were packed well and transported in a matter or days, weeks and even months before reaching the consumer. There is not much transparency throughout the process. Besides, eating food that were prepared outside are not great either. You never know how much salt, sugar, MSG and other substances that the cook used to serve. Of course, not to say that eating outside food is totally bad. It provides us with convenience and cheaper way to get a prepared food rather than we need to get our hands on to prepare. However, we cannot control how much additive other used on our food which will put the consumers at a disadvantage position. Now, there are some solutions that appeals to healthier food choices like salad bowl, poke bowl, prepacked food for pressure cooking, subscription based diets prescribed by nutritionist and so on. These options appeal to the consumers as a healthier choice to go for but the price is definitely higher. Hence, it restricted some from getting access to such choices due to the high cost of maintaining such diet. What if we could have some infrastructure that could produce more accessible healthy food that eventually convert a town to lead a healthier eating habits. Some hawkers could also tap on such change and get into the trend that emphasize on the balanced nutritional value of the meal. Well, there are a lot that could be done and this excites me as what I’m doing now will be something very impactful that would affect every level of society.

As of now, I see that the public has not gain the majority awareness about food safety and alternatives of farming and access to safer food. We have also arguments on the term “organic” which I personally think is just a marketing game. What we want to get are:

1. Transparency of the food source (the climate condition, the land condition, the farm condition, the human interaction with the food)
2. The nutritional value of the food material
3. Transparency of the chemical used to preserve or treat the produce (if any or claimed to be organic substance)

With these three information provided, we could confidently declare that this food is safe to consume, rather than trying to justify whether it is organic or not which is not the relevant and right question to ask. There are more that could be discussed and argue about this topic which I will doing more topical writings about it.

Going for the last rush of the event to see if there’s any more leads to get to. A very interesting final quarter for the year and looking forward to a greener 2020 to come. (Ohya, nice meeting up with @orangila who is also an exhibitor there too!)