Seoul Subway Smart Farm Selected as Best Innovation Case among Local Public Enterprises

Awarded the Minister of the Interior and Safety Prize (Grand Prize) in the 'Job Creation and Regional Economic Revitalization' category... Highly praised for creating urban farms in subways by integrating information and communication technology, generating revenue and employment... Additional farms being established at Nambu Terminal Station and others... Will continue to innovate as a new approach to urban agriculture

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] Seoul Metro (President Kim Sang-beom)'s project ‘Metro Smart Farm Creating ICT Agricultural Innovation Even Underground’ won the Grand Prize (Minister of the Interior and Safety Award) in the ‘Job Creation and Regional Economic Revitalization’ category at the ‘2020 Local Public Enterprise Innovation Best Practices Competition’ hosted by the Local Public Enterprise Evaluation Institute (Ministry of the Interior and Safety).

The ‘Local Public Enterprise Innovation Best Practices Competition’ was held for the first time this year by the Local Public Enterprise Evaluation Institute to discover innovative best practices of local public enterprises, receiving a total of 382 cases.

The smart farm is a cultivation facility where robots handle everything from sowing to harvesting to grow clean vegetables, enabling continuous production 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Metro installed this smart farm in subway stations and collaborated with the agricultural corporation Farmate to brand it as ‘Metro Farm.’

The smart farm project was prepared to efficiently utilize idle spaces such as vacant commercial areas and aging facilities within stations, in response to various public policies including the government’s ‘8 Leading Innovation Growth Projects’ and Seoul City’s ‘Urban Agriculture Activation to Enhance Ecological Sensitivity.’

The subway smart farm has the advantage of saving installation costs by using existing structures within stations and can stably produce plants by artificially controlling environmental factors necessary for plant growth (light, temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, nutrients, etc.) through advanced information and communication technology (ICT).

Since June last year, the Metro has been operating urban-type smart farms on a pilot basis at five stations including Dapsimni Station on Line 5, Sangdo Station on Line 7, Cheonwang Station, Chungjeongno Station, and Euljiro 3-ga Station, generating sales of 75 million KRW through crop sales and experiential visits, creating a new revenue source.

More than 200 jobs are also expected to be created. Including the eight jobs created through the current pilot project, once large-scale smart farm spaces such as Nam Bus Terminal are completed, the Metro plans to prioritize recruiting related workers from youth startups and vulnerable groups to establish large-scale urban jobs.

Joo Jin-jung, Head of Complex Development at Seoul Metro, said, “I am pleased that Metro Farm’s efforts have been highly evaluated for achieving results in job creation, revenue generation, and cultural space creation in the field of urban agriculture,” adding, “We will continue to innovate so that Metro Farm can establish itself as a new approach to urban agriculture.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.