在集装箱里种菜：诞生于大流行的“垂直农场”
This Vertical Farm Was Born in the Pandemic. Sales Are Up.
IAN TEH, MIKE IVES
2020年10月14日
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The setup of the two friends’ agricultural venture was unusual. Their farm sat next to a gas station, inside a shipping container where the plants grew in vertically stacked shelves. And the timing of their first sales — during the early days of Malaysia’s coronavirus outbreak — seemed less than ideal.
马来西亚吉隆坡——这两位友人的农业企业设立得很不寻常。他们的农场紧邻一个加油站，位于一个集装箱里，农作物就长在垂直堆放的架子上。他们首次销售的时机——在马来西亚新冠病毒暴发的初期——似乎也不太理想。
“We were a nascent product in an uncertain market,” said Shawn Ng, 28, a co-founder of the vertical farm, the Vegetable Co. “We weren’t too sure if it would take off.”
“我们是一个不确定市场中的新产品，”28岁的垂直农场蔬菜公司(Vegetable Co.)的联合创始人肖恩·吴(Shawn Ng)说。“当时我们不太确定生意是否能做得起来。”
“But somehow,” he added, “the market kind of played in our favor.”
“但不知怎的，”他补充道，“市场在某种程度上对我们有利。”
As in-person shopping wanes during the pandemic, Mr. Ng’s Malaysia-based operation is one of many small farms around the world that are selling fresh produce directly to consumers in ways that bypass brick-and-mortar grocery stores.
大流行期间，人们面对面的购物活动减少了，肖恩·吴在马来西亚的公司是世界上许多绕过实体杂货店，直接向消费者出售新鲜产品的小型农场之一。
Some farms sell on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Lazada, Alibaba’s online emporium for Southeast Asia, or through smaller ones like Harvie, a Pennsylvania-based website that connects consumers with individual farms across the United States and Canada.
有些农场在亚马逊或来赞达（Lazada，阿里巴巴面向东南亚地区的电商平台）上销售，或者是Harvie等较小的平台，这是总部位于宾夕法尼亚州的一家网站，把消费者与美加地区的私人农场联系起来。
Others, like the Vegetable Co., sell directly to customers.
其他农场，比如上文的蔬菜公司，则直接面向消费者。
“I was very ‘kan cheong’ during the lockdown period,” said one of Mr. Ng’s regular customers, Ayu Samsudin, using a Cantonese word for anxious. “Having fresh vegetables delivered to your doorstep was such a relief.”
“在封锁期间，我非常‘kan cheong’，”肖恩·吴的一位常客阿尤·沙姆斯丁 (Ayu Samsudin)说，她用了紧张的粤语说法。“有新鲜蔬菜送到家门口真让人松了口气。”
The Vegetable Co. consists of a 320-square-foot shipping container on the edge of a parking lot in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s largest city. It opened for business, with just a handful of customers, about a month before the country’s restrictive lockdown took effect in mid-March.
蔬菜公司位于马来西亚最大城市吉隆坡的一个停车场边上，由一个320平方英尺的集装箱构成。他们开业时客源寥寥，那是3月中旬，该国的严格封锁措施生效前的大约一个月。
Revenue grew by 300 percent in the first few weeks, and the shipping container is now approaching production capacity because of high demand, said Mr. Ng’s business partner, Sha G.P.
最初几周的营收增长了300%，由于需求旺盛，集装箱现在已经接近产能上限，肖恩·吴的商业伙伴沙·G·P(Sha G.P.)说。
Apart from the gas station, the shipping container’s other neighbors are a driving range and an oil palm plantation. Inside, tightly packed shelves with hydroponic lettuce, sprouts and other vegetables grow under LED lights.
除了加油站，集装箱附近还有一个高尔夫练习场和一个油棕种植园。在LED灯的照射下，集装箱内部的货架上摆满了水培生菜、豆芽和其他蔬菜。
The wallpaper outside the growing chamber shows blue sky and clouds, evoking the view from an old-fashioned farm. But employees pace the chamber’s narrow corridor wearing rubber gloves, surgical masks and white lab coats, as if it were a hospital ward.
生长室外的墙纸上印有蓝天和白云，让人联想起传统农场的景致。但员工们像在医院病房里一样，戴着橡胶手套、医用口罩，穿着白大褂，在狭窄的过道里走来走去。
The founders have scant experience with traditional farming, and they speak about their work with Silicon Valley-like jargon.
两位创始人都缺乏传统农业经验，谈论工作时讲的是硅谷式的行话。
Mr. Sha said he first became interested in vertical farming after watching “The Martian,” the 2015 film in which an American astronaut played by Matt Damon is stranded on Mars and learns to grow his own food.
沙说他最早对垂直农业感兴趣，是看了《火星救援》(The Martian)之后，在这部2015年上映的影片中，马特·达蒙(Matt Damon)饰演的美国宇航员被困在火星上，学会了自己种植食物。
“I was lost in awe about the degree of precision in the technology along with the elegance of the solution to grow vegetables in a zero-gravity environment,” he said. “Since then, I have gone down the rabbit hole of independent research.”
“我对这一技术的精准度和在零重力环境里种植蔬菜的优雅解决方案充满了敬畏，”他说。“从那时起，我就钻进了独立研究的兔子洞。”
The coronavirus took off in Malaysia in March, after an Islamic revivalist group’s gathering there became one of the pandemic’s biggest vectors in Southeast Asia. Since then, the country of about 32 million has weathered the outbreak relatively well, at least compared with some of its neighbors. As of Thursday, it had reported fewer than 10,000 confirmed cases since the pandemic began, according to a New York Times database.
在当地一个伊斯兰复兴运动组织的聚会后，新冠病毒3月在马来西亚传播开，那次聚会成为东南亚最大的疫情传染源之一。自那以后，至少与一些邻国相比，这个拥有3200万人口的国家相对较好地控制住了疫情。根据《纽约时报》的一个数据库，截至9月3日，自大流行以来该国报告的确诊病例不到1万。
Malaysia’s initial lockdown allowed only one person per household to go outside for essential errands, and the police enforced local travel restrictions with roadblocks.
马来西亚最初的封锁只允许每户一人外出，完成必要差使，警方还设置了路障来执行当地的旅行限制。
But even though the rules were gradually loosened to let most businesses reopen, many urban Malaysians have maintained the online shopping habits they developed during the initial lockdown, said Audrey Goo, the founder of MyFishman, an e-commerce platform that connects fishermen from villages along the country’s west coast with consumers in Kuala Lumpur.
不过，尽管相关规定已经逐渐放宽，让多数企业重新开业，但许多马来西亚城市居民仍保持着最初封锁期间养成的网上购物习惯，电商平台MyFishman的创始人奥德丽·古(Audrey Goo)表示。该平台把马来西亚西海岸村庄的渔民与吉隆坡的消费者联系了起来。
“Not many end users are willing to go back to the wet market,” said Ms. Goo, adding that her company’s sales had roughly doubled during the pandemic. “So I think the whole business model will continue to change.”
“没有多少终端用户愿意回到活鲜市场消费，”奥德丽·古说，并补充称在大流行期间，她公司的销售额大约翻了一番。“所以我认为整个商业模式将会继续改变。”
Mr. Ng said the Vegetable Co.’s parent company, Future Farms, was now seeking seed capital to finance an expansion into a larger facility. He recently hired an architect and a software developer to design it.
肖恩·吴说，蔬菜公司的母公司未来农场(Future Farms)目前正在寻求种子资金，以获取更大的生产规模。他最近聘请了一名架构师和一名软件工程师来做设计。
For now, though, the operation remains modest.
但就目前而言，他们的规模仍然有限。
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Ng climbed into his car for a delivery run that snaked through low-rise residential neighborhoods, as the sun sank below Kuala Lumpur’s hazy downtown skyline.
前不久的一个下午，当太阳从吉隆坡市中心灰蒙蒙的天际线下沉的时候，肖恩·吴钻进自己的车里准备送货，送货路线要蜿蜒穿过低层住宅区。
One of the customers on the 40-plus-mile route, Gudrun Olafsdottir, said that along with yoga and meditation, greens from the Vegetable Co. were part of a routine that helped her keep physically and mentally fit during the pandemic.
古德伦·奥拉夫斯多蒂尔(Gudrun Olafsdottir)是这条40多英里的送货路线上要经过的顾客之一，她说除了瑜伽和冥想，蔬菜公司的青菜已经成为她日常生活的一部分，帮助她在疫情期间保持身心健康。
Ms. Olafsdottir, who is from Iceland and works in retail, found the farm on Facebook through a local chef who specializes in raw and vegan cooking. She said it was one of several local businesses that she was supporting these days with a “financial hug.”
奥拉夫斯多蒂尔来自冰岛，在零售业工作，她在Facebook上通过本地一位擅长生食和素菜烹饪的厨师发现了这家农场。她说，这是她这段时间给予“财务拥抱”支持的几家本地企业之一。
“I think that we could do so many things to support those in need if we just consciously choose how we spend our time and money,” she has written on her blog. “A hug and a squeeze.”
“我认为，如果我们有意识地选择如何使用时间和金钱，就可以做很多事情来支持那些需要帮助的人，”她在自己的博客上写到。“给予一个拥抱和一只援手。”
