At Sustenir Agriculture's indoor farm in Singapore (Photo: Reuters)Singapore (VNA) – As Singapore, an unlikely place for farmingrevolution, aims to boost agricultural production and rely less on imports tofeed its 5.6 million people, the country has developed tiered fish farms,vegetable plots atop office buildings and lab-grown shrimp.
Singapore produces about 10 percent of its food; however, as climate change andpopulation growth threatens global food supplies, it eyes to raise that to 30percent by 2030 under a plan called “30-by-30”.
The country has not given a total pricetag for “30-by-30” first unveiled inMarch, but it has various funding schemes. Besides Temasek, the government hasset aside 144 million SGD (104 million USD) for research and development intofood, and 63 million SGD for agriculture firms to use technology to boostproductivity.
As for Singapore, a tiny island state in Southeast Asia, the challenge is space.With only 1 percent of the country’s 724 square km land devoted to agricultureand production costs higher than the rest of the region, urban farmers have toseek solutions to the government’s call to grow more with less expenditure.
Paul Teng, a professor specialising in agriculture at Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, said that space, not land, is the key to ensuring food security inSingapore.
Sustenir Agriculture is one of the more than 30 vertical farms in Singapore,which has seen a doubling in so-called sky farms in three years. The hydroponicfarm cultivates non-native varieties like kale, cherry tomatoes andstrawberries indoors under artificial lights and sells the produce to localsupermarkets and online grocers.
Susternir mobilised 22 million SGD from backers like Temasek and Australia’sGrok Ventures this year, which will be used for an expansion in Singapore andopening in Hong Kong.
Temaesek also provides funds for Apollo Aquaculture Group, which is buildinghighly automated, eight-storey fish farm. The new farm will deliver more than a20-fold increase in its annual output of 110 tonnes of fish.
One Singaporean firm sill in its infancy but hoping to reach a mass market isShiok Meats, which aims to be the world’s first to sell shrimp grown from cellsin a lab. After raising 4.6 million SGD in seed funding this year, the companyplans to sell its product in one or two premium restaurants by late 2020, andby 2030 hopes to produce enough shrimp meat to feed Singapore.-VNA
VNA
