ABOUT THE PROJECT
This model aims at overcoming harsh and challenging weather/environmental conditions to successfully grow crops in an easy and convenient way through growing crops in plastic bottles clung on ropes designed to carry hundreds of bottles. Such systems have the opportunity to provide urban farming solutions on numerous unbuilt plots of land in inner cities. This also greatly helps in recycling plastic waste that have to proved to be a headache in environmental pollution.
ABOUT THE MENTOR
Atta
This summer's Vertical Farming Project will be overseen by Atta Frimpong.
He is an Agribusiness Development Executive at Growniche Ltd. With a PHD in Applied Agriculture from Agrostudies Israel. His expertise range from Agribusiness development & management to Sales marketing, Vegetable production, Horticulture and Procurement.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Eight passionate and skill seeking participants make up this diverse team. Judercio Nhauche is a management Information systems student, who hopes to raise awareness about vertical farming in his Mozambican communities. Malcom Nphera on the other hand, is a mechanical engineering student aiming to expand vertical farming for large scale production in Zimbabwe.
THE JOURNEY
Two intensive training sessions were held on May 28th and June 11th, with guest presenter Mathais Ossom facilitating the latter. Innovative systems for vertical farming, as well as the demerits and merits of these systems were discussed. The team decided on the use of painted recycled plastic bottles for the project; painting being a necessity, so as to protect the plants from excessive sunlight. Environmental consciousness and design thinking are certainly on the radar.
"By way of recycling, containers or bottles, will be continually reused season after season to prolong the time it takes to dispose of them. After it is not fit for planting purposes, the plastics can be shredded and properly channeled to plastic recycling businesses."
- Atta Frimpomg, Mentor.
11th of June 2021
A session on nutrition and fertigation on plants took place on this day. Participants delved further into the problem space and partly into the ideation stage by discussing common nutritional deficiencies in plants, as well as how to address them.
16th of June 2021
Team members were asked to prepare concept papers on a specific problem within their locality, outlining the knowledge they'd acquired to solve the problem. Presentations took place on this day.
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