Li Yen shares her journey from studying in Pennsylvania to becoming an urban farmer in Kuala Lumpur. Urban Hijau teaches communities about growing food in the city, food waste management, and partners with schools and organizations across Malaysia.

Success comes from identifying community "champions" who can maintain urban farming projects after the initial 3-6 month setup period, ensuring long-term community ownership.

Children connect with urban farming through tasting fresh herbs, touching soil, and interacting with worms. Don't underestimate kids - they're often braver than adults and learn quickly when engaged through hands-on activities.

Teaching the complete cycle - from food scraps to compost to growing new food - helps people understand food systems and provides a practical starting point for urban farming.

3 Key Takeaways

1. Find Local Champions for Sustainability

Success comes from identifying community "champions" who can maintain urban farming projects after the initial 3-6 month setup period, ensuring long-term community ownership.

2. Engage Kids Through Sensory Experiences

Children connect with urban farming through tasting fresh herbs, touching soil, and interacting with worms. Don't underestimate kids - they're often braver than adults and learn quickly when engaged through hands-on activities.

3. Use Food Waste as an Educational Gateway

Teaching the complete cycle - from food scraps to compost to growing new food - helps people understand food systems and provides a practical starting point for urban farming.

We sit down with Kay Vasey, the visionary founder behind the world's first sustainable urban farming game on Roblox. Broadcasting from Singapore, Kay shares her remarkable journey from lawyer to game creator, driven by a mother's determination to help her vegetable-resistant child connect with food and nature.

What You'll Discover:

• How growing cucumbers on the 37th floor of a Singapore tower block sparked a gaming revolution
• The transformative moment when Kay's son finally tried homegrown tomatoes after watching them grow from tiny seeds
• Why meeting kids "where they are" in digital spaces can bridge the gap to real-world environmental action
• Singapore's ambitious 30 by 30 initiative and how vertical farming is reshaping urban food production

Perfect for:

• Parents seeking screen time that brings families together around meaningful topics
• Educators looking for innovative ways to engage tweens and teens with environmental issues
• Anyone curious about the intersection of technology, urban farming, and family bonding

Key Takeaway: Sometimes the path to getting kids excited about nature starts not in the garden, but in the games they already love. Kay's story proves that when we meet children in their digital worlds with purposeful content, we can inspire real-world curiosity, healthier eating habits, and deeper family connections around growing food together.

"It's not so much screen time, but screen use. What are you doing when you're on that screen?" - Kay Vasey

Listen now to discover how one mother's quest to get her child eating vegetables became a global movement connecting urban farming communities worldwide.

In this episode, Filipino urban farmer Jonathan Libag shares how school gardens and tiny community plots are improving kids' nutrition and sparking a new generation of growers across the Philippines.

1. In the Philippines, every public school is required to run a vegetable garden and kids, teachers, and parents all get their hands dirty.

2. A 30-square-meter garden in a squatter community now supplies meals to a local preschool, helping underweight children gain weight through fresh greens.

3. While digital farming games can teach tools and timing, Jonathan insists that real learning starts when kids touch the soil and see their vegetables grow slowly, not instantly.

Meet Buya, a biologist who witnessed Bali's landfills literally catch fire from methane gas produced by organic waste and decided to start with the children. Buya has pioneered Indonesia's first comprehensive organic waste education program, teaching kids and their family's how food scraps could fuel environmental disasters.

Discover his innovative plan to create composting partnerships that pay local gardeners, his app-based notification system that keeps clients engaged, and why he believes teaching proper waste separation now will yield results in 10-15 years.

Key Learnings:

• Crisis-driven education: Bali's landfills caught fire from methane gas produced by organic waste, making school-based composting education not just environmental awareness—but critical safety education for the next generation facing overwhelming waste disposal challenges.
• Early intervention strategy: Buya targets primary school children who receive no waste management education at home, believing that teaching proper waste separation and composting habits at ages 6-12 will create lasting behavioral change that emerges in 10-15 years.
• Partnership-powered expansion: Rather than expecting everyone to become composters, Buya plans to pay existing gardeners to process collected organic waste while providing them finished compost—creating income opportunities that simultaneously reduce landfill pressure and support local urban farming initiatives.

Stockholm-based engineer Hamza Q is transforming urban farming through EcoBloom Technologies, combining AI-powered crop monitoring with gamification to help farmers worldwide "grow smarter." From converting WWII caves into vertical farms to creating modern Tamagotchi-style growing systems, Hamza reveals how technology is revolutionizing local food production.

Key Learnings:

• AI-powered early detection: Smart sensors and image analysis can detect crop diseases and pests at early stages, significantly reducing waste in indoor farming environments while providing real-time insights that go beyond basic temperature readings to answer the crucial question of "why" crops behave certain ways.
• Gamification drives food education: EcoBloom's IoT-powered micro aquaponic systems functioned like a "modern Tamagotchi," allowing families to feed fish and control growing conditions through an app, successfully engaging children and parents in sustainable farming practices and local food production.
• Urban farming fills critical gaps: As populations urbanize and grow, food must be produced "closer to the consumer" using unconventional spaces like underground parking garages, old warehouses, and even in-store vertical farms where customers can harvest directly from farm to shelf within feet of checkout.

From beekeeping beginnings to high-tech towers, Angie Mead King is redefining farming in the Philippines through eye-catching social media content that connects her pesticide-free produce with a digital community hungry for sustainable growing tips.

In this episode we cover: 

• Angie switched to high-tech Tower Farms after beekeeping struggles, creating a pesticide-free greenhouse system where diverse crops thrive.
• She rocks social media by showing off both sleek tower farms and natural soil techniques, keeping followers engaged with her experimental approach.
• Post-pandemic "plantitos" and "plantitas" (Filipino plant lovers) are hungry for farming content, with Angie spreading the message that you can grow food almost anywhere.
• Her social media tips? Keep it eye-catching, focus on what makes you different, and be real about mistakes – people actually love seeing the not-so-perfect side of farming.
• Gaming can spark real-world farming interest, with simulation games giving kids that same satisfaction of growth and achievement that might inspire them to get their hands dirty for real.

If you’re a parent, educator, or urban farmer looking for ways to connect with the next generation, make sure to check to stay tuned for the all the Sky Farm Island Podcast episodes.

Learn more about the world's first sustainable Roblox game, Sky Farm Island at https://www.skyfarmisland.com/.

In this conversation with "The Freestyle Farmer" Christopher Leow, we discover how concrete jungles can transform into edible landscapes. 
 
Urban farming isn't only about food production, but about reconnecting city dwellers with nature through beautifully designed, functional spaces.

Learn about: 

🌱 Christopher's unexpected path: aerospace engineer → chef → urban farming innovator
🏙️ Creating farms on rooftops, hospitals, and schools in a land-scarce city
📱 Instagram-worthy gardens vs. the hard work of maintenance
🧑‍🌾 Transforming urban farms into tourist attractions and community spaces
♻️ Adapting traditional composting for city environments
🎮 Using gaming to inspire the next generation of urban farmers

If you’re a parent, educator, or urban farmer looking for ways to connect with the next generation, make sure to check to stay tuned for the all the Sky Farm Island Podcast episodes.

Learn more about the world's first sustainable Roblox game, Sky Farm Island at https://www.skyfarmisland.com/.

What happens when a wooden planter outside a window grows into a movement that transforms schools, hospitals, public spaces—and lives?

In this episode of the Sky Farm Island Podcast, we meet Gaby Vargas, a passionate urban gardener from Mexico City, whose 25-year journey into urban farming began with a single lettuce and a surprising realisation about how disconnected we are from the food we eat.

Gaby shares:

• The emotional and healing power of growing your own food
• How school gardens became a foundation for long-term change
• Why children connect so easily to soil, seeds, and seasons
• The “carrot lesson” that shifts how we value food
• Her vision for cities filled with microclimates, biodiversity, and compost culture

Tune in for a deeply personal and inspiring conversation about the power of urban gardening to create more resilient communities—and why kids might just be the best advocates for a better food future.

Learn more about the world’s first sustainable Roblox game, Sky Farm Island, at https://www.skyfarmisland.com/

If you’re a parent, educator, or urban farmer looking for ways to connect with the next generation, make sure to check to stay tuned for the all the Sky Farm Island Podcast episodes.

Learn more about the world's first sustainable Roblox game, Sky Farm Island at https://www.skyfarmisland.com/.

In this episode, Annika Lundkvist speaks with Rakan, founder of Carob House in Madaba, Jordan. 

• Discover how Jordan shifted from exporting wheat to importing 97% of its needs, and how Rakan's quest for authentic food led him to reimagine farming practices.
• Learn how children intuitively connect with nature on farms and often become advocates for better food choices at home
• Hear why Rakan believes kids hold the key to the solution for the future and why he thinks the problem with us adults is that we lost the child in us.

This episode explores how traditional knowledge and innovative approaches to food production can create sustainable pathways for urban communities.

If you’re a parent, educator, or urban farmer looking for ways to connect with the next generation, make sure to check to stay tuned for the all the Sky Farm Island Podcast episodes.

Learn more about the world's first sustainable Roblox game, Sky Farm Island at https://www.skyfarmisland.com/.

How can we engage children in taking action towards a more sustainable planet in ways that empower rather than overwhelm them? What strategies help young people maintain interest in urban farming over time? How can digital tools complement hands-on growing experiences?

In this episodes, we explore these questions and more with Alex Hannah of Farm Urban, who shares insights from innovative educational programs that have reached over 60,000 children in the UK. 

Learn about the story that transformed a simple lettuce into almost ‘pets’ for his kids with personalised growing boxes and the students challenges to design their own food businesses. 

They key to inspire kids it to foster ownership, enhancing food literacy, and strengthening young people’s connection to the food they eat. Learn more about Alex's experience and perspective. 

If you’re a parent, educator, or urban farmer looking for ways to connect with the next generation, make sure to check to stay tuned for the all the Sky Farm Island Podcast episodes.

Learn more about the world's first sustainable Roblox game, Sky Farm Island at https://www.skyfarmisland.com/.