Preparation is now underway to convert a former garment factory in San Antonio into a high-tech farm that uses regulated lights and temperature to grow the kinds of crops that cannot tolerate the island’s hot weather especially during the dry season.
Hong Kyun Kim is investing $500,000 to combine a hydroponic farm with the newest technology that he believes will modernize Saipan’s agriculture.
Kim, who currently operates a 1,000-square meter hydroponic farm in Chalan Kanoa, has leased the former Winner Corporation’s garment factory compound at the back of the Department of Labor.
He plans to convert the area into a “food factory” that can produce 10 times more than a traditional farm.
The factory’s third floor, which is 14,000 square feet, will be turned into an indoor farm, while the ground and second floors will be the manufacturing site for value-added farm products.
The indoor farm will be equipped with light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, and air-conditioning units that can be controlled so that the lights and temperature are suitable for the types of crops not usually grown on island.
This technology, according to Kim, has been practiced for many years in Japan and South Korea.
Many years ago, he recalled, farming technology was so expensive due to the price of each LED and the cost of power consumption.
But recently, Kim said the price of LEDs has started to go down which gives him the courage to give it a try.
The cost of power, he said, will not be a problem because the LED technology can stimulate a plant’s ability to produce more than it normally does.
In South Korea he said, there are indoor farms that can produce up to 30 times more than a traditional farm.
Kim noted that although the CNMI has vegetable farm plots, imported farm products are still sold in local stores. These are the kinds of crops that cannot grow in a tropical climate.
Indoor farming, Kim said, can address this.
Each square feet of the building’s third floor, he said, can come up with bigger yields because LED makes vegetables grow faster.
Kim believes everyone on Saipan should help boost the economy of the island.
He thinks the $4 million that local agriculture generates each year is small.
Agriculture, he added, accounts for only about 2 percent of the islands’ gross domestic products.
With the demise of garment manufacturing and with tourism still struggling, Kim said the islands should look at agriculture as an alternative industry.
In the next few months, Kim said he will start furnishing the defunct factory with food-producing equipment.
Once the LEDs and air-conditioning units are installed, he will start planting cabbage, cucumber and probably roses for a dry run.
