{"id":446,"date":"2013-01-06T06:24:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T06:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benbansal.me\/?p=446"},"modified":"2013-01-06T06:30:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T06:30:30","slug":"sky-greens-singapore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/?p=446","title":{"rendered":"Sky Greens Singapore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have <a href=\"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/?p=107\">written<\/a> about vertical farming before on this blog. Hence I was interested when I saw a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2012\/12\/09\/business\/eco-singapore-vertical-farm\/index.html\">story<\/a> on CNN this morning. It profiles a Singaporean venture called <a href=\"http:\/\/skygreens.appsfly.com\/\">&#8220;Sky Greens&#8221;<\/a> that has been running innovative city farms for a while. Their farms are a little different than the monstrous ones imagined by mainly concept artists and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Vertical-Farm-Feeding-World-Century\/dp\/0312610696\/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1285024918&amp;sr=1-1\">(possibly weird) scientists<\/a>. They remain quite small to this date and although the CEO of the company has big plans, they don&#8217;t seem megalomaniac.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.cdn.turner.com\/cnn\/dam\/assets\/121205042031-singapore-vertical-farm-3-horizontal-gallery.jpg\" alt=\"null\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The produce they sell to local supermarkets is about 40% more pricey than Chinese imports. It would probably be even more if it wasn&#8217;t for the subsidies the venture receives from the Singaporean government. However, that doesn&#8217;t make the &#8220;local&#8221; Pak Choi and salad astronomically expensive and perhaps on par with organic veg.<\/p>\n<p>I like the technology employed here as well: rather than using expensive hydroponic solutions and artificial lighting, Sky Greens looks more like a stacked aluminium greenhouse, using a patented rotation technique:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Slowly rotating on water-powered, aluminum A-frames, the vegetables pass through a trough of water every eight hours. The water powering the frames is recycled and filtered before returning to the plants. All organic waste on the farm is composted and reused.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The plants don&#8217;t get overstressed under the sun&#8230; at the same time they can get nutrients in the water equally,&#8221; says [CEO] Ng.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All in all, this perhaps represents a workable medium-term solution to vertical farming\u00a0in light-rich and warm environments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have written about vertical farming before on this blog. Hence I was interested when I saw a story on CNN this morning. It profiles a Singaporean venture called &#8220;Sky Greens&#8221; that has been running innovative city farms for a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/?p=446\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-future-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}