2nd June 2021
Samantha Hsuu
A passion for agriculture research, nutrition, and soil health restoration to combat food insecurity and nutrition poverty - these key drivers have kept paraplegic farmer Dr Billy Tang motivated to work despite his chronic pain from suffering a severed spinal cord.
Dr. Billy’s life took an unexpected turn after a tragic car accident which left him paraplegic in 2015. Undeterred with a renewed purpose in his new body, he embraced his situation as a Person with Disability (PWD) and established his social enterprise PWD Smart Farmability - which has since won two highly-coveted prestigious humanitarian awards; the STAR Golden Hearts Award 2020 and Gamuda Inspiration Award 2020.
PWD Smart Farmability’s goal is to empower Malaysia’s disabled community (OKU) with nutritious food - as the disabled community are the world’s most marginalized group being physically, mentally, and/or financially unable to compete with the rest of society for access to nutritious and healthy food. Through regenerative farming practices - Dr. Billy and his team has been providing fresh, organic, and nutritious farm produce to underprivileged communities and PWD families since the start of the COVID19 crisis in 2020.
With a slew of accolades and recognitions from both government and private corporations alike, locally and internationally, PWD Smart Farmability has been diligently advocating for the restoration of biodiversity in monocrop plantations and education for households to self-sustain through soil health. The social enterprise firmly believes that soil health restoration is the key to solving poverty alleviation, food insecurity, malnutrition, and climate change.
However, soil health is not being discussed often enough - despite being an important component in making the planet a better place for everyone.
Thus, Dr. Billy invented the world’s first regenerative Organic Vegetable Terrarium, using his proprietary soil biology and two decades of experience as an agriculturist and private researcher. The terrarium is self-watering and regenerates with no fertilizer input. All one needs to do is to place the terrarium in a permanent location that receives maximum sunlight.
The Organic Vegetable Terrarium is essentially a greenhouse downsized into a 60L food-grade plastic box - which enables beneficiaries to enjoy the vegetables without being a farmer themselves. To date, over 500 of these terrariums are sitting in the homes of the rich and the poor. By the end of 2021, PWD Smart Farmability aims to have 3000 terrariums in the homes of marginalized beneficiaries. Marginalized beneficiaries, in PWD Smart Farmability’s context, constitutes of homeless senior shelters, orphanages, coastal indigenous communities, drug rehab centers, prisons, single mothers, and hostels for people with disabilities.
The vegetable varieties available in the terrariums are Brazillian Spinach, Red Watercress, Sayur Manis, Mexican Mint. Dr. Billy and his team aims to produce up to 6 varieties of vegetables in this terrarium.
The terrariums are available for adoption at only RM150 (USD $35) per box, and the terrariums will go to the home of a needy family - who are cradled for a minimum of 3 months to ensure success of the terrarium in their home.
Drug rehab centers and homeless senior shelters have been harvesting continuously from their terrariums bi-weekly for 8 to 9 months now - and the terrariums are still thriving. The longest terrarium is 23 months, and still thriving too.
The Malaysian Global Innovation and Creative Centre (MaGIC) has recognized the success of Dr. Billy Tang’s efforts and awarded the social enterprise a Social Impact Matching Grant of RM500,000 to scale up the production of these terrariums, as well as organic vegetables and fish for the beneficiaries.
PWD Smart Farmability incorporates 10 out of 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals across their projects.
Check out their Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pwdsmartfarmability
