Vertical Farming Strategies and Sustainable Agriculture Practices in Malaysia

Abstract

The research study is aimed at examining strategies of vertical farming business in Malaysia. The concept of sustainable agriculture is studied in detail and an attempt is made at modelling sustainable agricultural enterprises in Malaysia to act as a benchmark for vertical farming businesses. A solution to sustainable agriculture practices is vertical farming, a concept that was made popular by an American geologist Gilbert Elis Bailey in 1915. Vertical farming is not a new idea, having being used by the indigenous people of South American as layered food growing techniques. It is widely practiced by developed countries – the United States of America, Canada, Europe, The United Kingdom, Japan and Singapore and is seen as the future agriculture practice in most developed and developing countries where scarcity of arable land and unpredictability of weather conditions is constant. The purpose of this study is to raise awareness on the unsustainability of traditional agricultural practices and introduce vertical farming as one of the solutions. An exploratory research design is employed to study the various stakeholders in the vertical farming value chain to understand their existing practices, challenges and critical success factors in managing successful vertical farms in Malaysia.