APEC IncluNext
Local Innovation Ecosystem Forum
24th - 25th Jun 2019
Presenter: Yi-Hsuan Hsieh
CEO & Co-funder of COMMA
COMMA
Thanks for your listening. If you are interested in how edible landscape and sustainable horticulture practices can be integrated in urban living, please follow COMMA on our FB, IG and Website and don’t be hesitate to let us know your thoughts and needs by leaving a message or make a phone call.
COMMA was founded in Chiayi in 2017 when I was a fresh graduate. At that time, COMMA was a student team, which received funding for innovative startup ideas from the incubator center of National Chiayi University. With the support, we developed our core technology, organic hydroponics, and used the idea to won the U-start innovative start-up funding in 2017 and award in 2018. Since then, our team has been focusing on applying landscape and horticultural specialty to urban farming and food system to promote a lifestyle with quality, style and sustainability. On the basis of organic hydroponics know-how, we continuously innovate new products and services, such as shipping container greenhouse, microgreens, edible flowers, food and agriculture education. We also collaborate with different companies, such as tent and hydroponic equipment, to explore diverse possibilities beyond our existing business scope.
At present, our team connects local university, industries, government, non-governmental organizations, and funding through putting efforts in the local urban agriculture and food system. Guided by the framework of Local Urban Agriculture & Food System, we have developed organic liquid fertilizers and using them to produce hydroponic vegetables in urban and peri-urban farms. We also sell delicate horticultural crops to local restaurants. This helps them to create new ideas in food presenting, as well as to stimulate a healthy, high-end, slow-food movement. Moreover, our collaboration with National Chiayi University, PLUS ONE INNOVATION company, and Environmental Protection Bureau, Chiayi City in local food and agriculture education has facilities the promotion of our philosophy of a quality, style and sustainable urban living.
Chaiyi City has been considered as a SLOW CITY, having a downshifting lifestyle. Moreover, as surrounded by productive landscape, the city has abundant sources of locally grown food. Thus, the spirit of slow food can be easily found in its service industry. Several café, patisseries and restaurants provide sweets exquisitely made with locally produced fruits, and freshly delivered milk from nearby dairy farm, tea and coffee grown on Mt. Ali, as well as traditional cuisines featured with poultry meat raised in the region or fishery products cultured or capture around the sea shore. The city with its unique tranquil atmosphere has continuously attracted young people to start up their own culinary businesses here. Many of them respect slow food principles and promote an elegant and heathy food consuming trend.
Although slow food spirits are well developed in the city, a demand of locally produced high-end vegetables, such as edible flowers and microgreens, has not been fulfilled. This background provide a niche market for COMMA. With the ability to innovate and integrate, COMMA continuously puts effort in diverse domains of local urban agriculture and food system. It gradually builds up a network across public, private and academic sectors. It also collaborates the different sectors within the city boundary, in the region, and even overseas, including…
We build up the network on the foundation of our core technology, which is the know-how of organic hydroponics. This technology is adapted from NARO’s method and uses by-products of food industries, such as molasses, soybean meal, and oyster shell, to prepare organic fertilizers. By developing start-up ideas on the basis of organic hydroponics, we receive funding and awards from Innovation Incubator Center at National Chiayi University and Youth Development Administration, Ministry of Education. Meanwhile, we collaborate with Department of Horticultural Science at National Chiayi University for crop cultivation experiments, and continuously receiving advisory support from Plus One Innovation. We also work on an Academia-Industry Collaboration project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology. It brings together Wen’s Phoenixx Corp. and COMMA to develop a small-scale, detachable, yet wind resistant, tent greenhouse with organic hydroponic facilities for amateur urban customers. With the know-how, we have developed various facilities to grow lettuces, including small planters for household use, shelves and shipping containers for schools or public organizations. We will then have a business –scale trial with a local organic farm- the HAPPINESS FARM.
In the past, we have use under-utilized urban space to grow edible horticultural products, mostly lettuces. However, there is an increasing demand for baby leaves, microgreens, fresh herbs and edible flowers. In order to response to the demand, we are going to expand the cultivation scale by collaborating with local farms. So, the products will be sent to local brunch restaurants or dessert shops in the following seasons. Microgreens are the scale of vegetable harvested on the seventh to fourteenth day after being seeded. They contain higher concentration of micro nutrients than the mature scale of vegetables and thus are know as a type of super food. Other than that, they are exquisite in appearance as those edible flowers and have been widely adopted by Chefs and other food stylist for plating and garnishing.
Currently, we grow microgreens, herbs and edible flowers with our urban farming technology, and deliver them to Restaurant HERE for Chef’s Tasting Menu. We have also combines the urban horticultural products with western cuisines, light meals and sweets.
In order to let people understand the benefits of urban horticulture and food system, COMMA has also collaborated with National Chiayi University, PLUS ONE INNOVATION company, and Environmental Protection Bureau in conducting local food and agriculture education. By participating different types of educational activities, the general public, elementary school pupils, parents and children, and even the elderly get to know innovative urban cultivating technologies, and realizing the social, economic and environmental benefits generated from urban horticulture. Moreover, these bring COMMA new associates in local network of urban food and agriculture system.
COMMA continuously realizes the concept of edible landscape and urban agriculture in various forms, including indoor edible walls and rooftop gardening for cafes, ebb & flow systems for growing microgreens in urban yards and gardens. Our shipping container greenhouse has also been transported to the Affiliated Experimental Elementary School of NCYU and the garden competition site of 2018 Taichung World Flora Exposition. These demonstrate a wide range of urban horticulture can be integrated into urbanites’ daily life and create an healthier, more stylish and sustainable urban living.
COMMA remains commitment to promote a quality, style and sustainable urban living through our horticultural and landscape design professions. Based on current achievements, our short-term goal is expanding the cultivation scale and distribution channels of our urban horticultural crops, for example microgreens and edible flowers. For long-term goal, we aim at establishing a complex headquarter with business-scale farm and culinary space open to the public and run by the company. Together, these will help COMMA to deliver a holistic concept of sustainable horticulture practices integrated into urban living.
Thanks for your listening. If you are interested in how edible landscape and sustainable horticulture practices can be integrated in urban living, please follow COMMA on our FB, IG and Website and don’t be hesitate to let us know your thoughts and needs by leaving a message or make a phone call.
