Urban Farms Take Root In Singapore’s Race For More Food Self-Sufficiency – Analysis

By Paul Teng

Singapore’s ambitious bid to revolutionise food security has turned it into a living experiment in high-tech urban farming and novel food production. From lab-grown chicken to indoor vegetable farms, the city-state’s efforts have captured global attention. But with rising costs, delayed ventures and questions about economic viability, the goal of a higher level of self-sufficiency remains uncertain.

Small city-states like Singapore often lack the natural resources to grow enough food to meet demand. While Singapore historically has had some level of agriculture in its peri-urban areas — mainly producing Asian leafy greens, eggs, fish and fruits — over 90 per cent of its food is imported from over 170 countries.

In the 1980s, a game-changing decision was made to aggregate all farming into six agrotech parks and several aquazones in the coastal waters of its many islands. The rationale was that agriculture is a lower value-generating economic activity than sectors like banking, finance and tourism, which could increase GDP overall and per household.

This decision was largely successful, with Singapore having one of the highest household incomes in Asia and a low per cent of household income spent on food — less than 10 per cent — which gave a false sense of food security. This complacency was further reinforced by external ratings which have ranked Singapore as the most food-secure country in the world for several years.

But supply chain disruptions due to war and geopolitical tensions, climate change and natural disasters forced a re-think of Singapore’s approach to assure food security around the turn of the century. While Singapore generally has accepted the Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition of food security, it has also defined its own pragmatic approach to food security.

The country embarked on an aspirational goal in 2019 — the ‘30 by 30’ — to produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs by 2030. In retrospect, this focus on achieving nutrition security instead of food security through technological innovations aligns more with concerns about having food resilience to deal with periods of import disruptions. Prior to 2019, it had invested to incentivise existing farms to adopt efficiency-enhancing technologies, mainly in vegetable-growing and aquaculture.

But in 2019, a slew of initiatives were launched on top of 30 by 30 — the most visible being the Singapore Food Story, now in its third phase with over S$300 million (US$219 million) in government funding. In the post-2019 era, goals were set to increase self-production levels of finfish and eggs, respectively at 15 per cent and 30 per cent of demand, and inject a new element of novel protein into the food system.

Collectively, all these initiatives aimed to support the scaling up of technology-enabled food production, to meet the 30 by 30 nutrition target and older production targets for fish, vegetables and eggs. The most note-worthy innovation was indoor controlled-environment high tech vegetable farming, which rapidly scaled up in numbers.

At the same time, to ensure that novel food regulations and approvals such as those for lab-cultivated chicken were science-backed, the entity ‘FRESH’ was established. The main goal of these initiatives was to reduce Singapore’s imports — increasing resilience and reducing vulnerability. But the country also had aspirations to become a major hub for agrifood innovations, aiming to export these to the rest of Asia and create another driver for economic expansion.

Despite these efforts, the self-production levels of vegetables and seafood have declined since 30 by 30 was implemented. Several new urban farming ventures have further been delayed or cancelled, perhaps reflecting the ‘funding winter’ that has been experienced even in larger countries.

Investors in the Singapore high tech urban farm ecosystem had likely not reckoned with the economic considerations of sustainable growth. Indoor controlled-environment farms for vegetables and fish require high capital and operating expenditure, resulting in a high cost-per-unit for produce. This poses a paradox between the cheap and affordable goods that governments want and the high net margins that entrepreneurs want.

Singapore’s indoor farms showed that it was not possible to produce Asian leafy greens at a price competitive with imports from neighbours like Malaysia and Indonesia. The response by these farms was then to grow higher-value vegetables and fish, failing to meet the food security needs of mass consumers. For novel foods such as plant-based proteins and cultivated meat, current technology is not able to produce at acceptable price points.

The question remains as to whether the Singapore model is replicable by other small states or scalable to achieve a high level of food self-sufficiency. Singapore has three main sources to make food available — imports, domestic self-production and overseas production. Small island states like Singapore, while aspiring to achieve more self-reliance, will need to explicitly recognise the role of imports — and supply chain openness — at the outset.

Production costs will inevitably have to be weighed against the willingness of consumers to pay more for local produce — consumer acceptance cannot be assumed. At a macro-level, government support for infrastructure should also be considered. Looking forward, urban farming is likely to remain a niche activity at best, albeit with potential to complement increased demands for specialty food and provide some resilience in times of disrupted supplies.

• About the author: Paul Teng is Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
• Source: This article was published by East Asia Forum