We can all be weekend farmers

You can be a software engineer on weekdays and a farmer on weekends. If you truly wish to embrace a new lifestyle that allows you to get back to nature without quitting your job, you can now take your passion to the next level. Hobby farming was inconceivable for most of us a few years ago, but recent moves towards digitization in agriculture have made it viable for enthusiasts with a little time and a big craving for natural produce.

Everyone has a different perspective and unique motivation that led them to hobby farming. In spite of having no farming background, many choose to adapt their lifestyle to control the quality of the food on their table.

Covid-19 made us realize just how we deeply value our communion with nature. Most of us wish to teach our children the health benefits in consuming fresh, seasonal and home-grown vegetables. The lockdowns rekindled dreams of owning and tending to ancestral small farms and gardens, living close to forests and spending more time outdoors. Some of us envision working on regenerating the earth.

Increasingly, digitization is impacting our work environments and changing our way of life. The influence of digitization on farming processes has been relatively recent, especially for smaller farms and greenhouses. Increasingly, small-scale farmers have been able to harness digital technologies to manage their greenhouses from a distance. Today one can use digital platforms to control and coordinate farming processes from a distance – migrating key activities to virtual environments enabling weekend farmers and hobby horticulturalists to carry out farming as an enterprise remotely. Embracing these novel agro-food technologies is now possible for entrepreneurial aficionados. We firmly believe this new trend in horticulture will contribute to sustainable regenerative food systems in the future.