Illumitex and AVF Award Malaysian Community Design First Place in 2016 Vertical Farming Competition

The organization partnered with the Association for Vertical Farming and Illumitex on its recent awards. “ More with less. ” In today’s modern agriculture and food system, this phrase bears the burden of being the summary, the catch-all, and goal of the collective effort to create a better food system. Technologies can drive us towards greater efficiency, businesses can promote increased sustainability. Systems lend themselves to better integration; all in an attempt to survive in a food system facing the external challenges of climate change, land scarcity, and costly transportation. One solution to these challenges is creating a food production system that uses less land, water, transportation, and energy, supplementing conventional agricultural systems and our total food system.

By leveraging advances in LED lighting, precision agriculture, big data, and renewable energy to fuel a rapidly growing space in plant and protein production system, vertical farming can play an important role in addressing these challenges. Even so, for vertical farming to remain vibrant and impactful, it needs the support of cutting edge innovators.

This vision promoted the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and Illumitex to create the 2016 Vertical Farming Award competition. It attracted 100 applications of unique ideas, ranging from utopian ideas to tangible, ready-to-adopt systems for households, from 25 different countries.