S’pore Turns To Farming & Aims To Produce 30% Of Food in S’pore By 2030

2019-03-08 , 8:00 pm

Yes, you read that right. Singapore is turning to farming.

Like dig into the ground and grow potato type of farming.

The sun peeks out behind the mountains in the distance, nourishing the rows and rows of lush produce spanning over the rolling hills; the sheer expanse of land feeds and sustains the nation with fresh and healthy crops.

This is exactly what farming in Singapore will not look like.

Instead, it looks more like this:

Image: YouTube (Singapore Academy of Corporate Management)

But you already knew that.

Like any smart nation, we can’t depend on luck for good harvests. Instead, we cheat and lie our way through mother nature to coax a good harvest out with the use of technology.

The need for self-sufficiency

The goal of producing 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030, or going by the catchier moniker: the “30 by 30 vision”, is a bold one.

But as announced by the Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli, it is a necessary step to improve the nation’s food security.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of food to a nation, especially when we’ve enjoyed such an abundance here in Singapore.

We haven’t been allowed to forget our precarious water situation.

But it’s true, they do have a lot of leverage over us.

Our food situation is not as dire because of the diversity of our sources, but with over 90% of our food supply being imported from other countries, we are still subjected to the fluctuations of the global food market.

Which includes sudden disruptions to transport routes, export bans and negative supply shocks due to climate change.

Whether intentionally or not, it is so easy to bring us to our knees, and that is a problem.

According to the Health Promotion Board, Singapore’s nutritional needs consists of 50% fruits and vegetables, 25% proteins and 25% staples.

By 2030, we aim to produce 20% of these fruits and vegetables and 10% of the proteins locally. At the moment, we produce less than 10% of our nutritional needs.

The plan

To meet our target, the agri-food industry is set to raise its productivity through – you guessed it – more technology.

There are plans to automate and integrate systems through robotics and sensors, to increase the climate resilience of the agriculture here.

In the process, water and energy efficiency will be an ideal we strive for, as part of the plan to be effective with our resources while maximising output.

Learning From Other Countries

Local farmers are travelling to other countries like China and Norway to learn from their high-tech vegetable farms and aquaculture technology.

Also, the Singapore Food Authority (SFA) will partner with universities for undergraduate and post-graduate programmes to groom agri- and aqua-technologists and culturists, urban farming specialists and researchers to bring new talent into the field.

So if you’ve ever dreamt of being a farmer in the countryside, you can at least fulfil the first part by actually taking courses on it!

Opening Up More Spaces For Farming

Another plan forward would be to find more physical spaces for farming. Yes, we all know Singapore is land scarce so can’t exactly afford to have golden fields of wheat waving merrily in the sunlight but we can fully utilise spaces like vacant state buildings, rooftops and the deep sea.

For example, like these urban farms on top of multi-storey carparks.

#SupportLocal

Lastly, more needs to be done to get Singaporeans to support local produce, in order to fuel the businesses here that are trying their best to grow their output.

It’s a matter of economics: if the consumer base grows, local farms enjoy more profits which goes into adopting better technology to fulfil the growing demand.

So start by trusting our home-grown crops, which are said to be safe, and in fact, fresher than the stuff you ship from overseas!

For a very lengthy but way more informative account of all the ways the SFA intends to increase food production, click here. This is just the TL;DR.

For a country that is so recognised as a food haven, it’s quite scary how vulnerable we are in this aspect.

But let’s hope that in the typical Singaporean fashion of overachieving, we will hit and surpass our target in 2030, and inch our way towards a more certain future.