Singapore’s High-Tech Farms Reach For Self-Sufficiency
AI-assisted food production, hydroponics, pesticide-free growing environments offer tantalizing possibilities
By: Gregory McCann
Singapore would at first seem an unlikely candidate for the title of Breadbasket of the World. Despite a population density of 8,276.58 people per sq. km, the third most-crowded country in the world, its focus, however impossible it might seem, is food self-sufficiency. The spotlight alit on the island republic in the past week when it was reported that Singapore had become the first country to grant regulatory approval for the sale of a Finnish product called Solein, which could be described as one of the most revolutionary food products ever produced. It can be manufactured out of thin air.
By extracting carbon dioxide from the air and combining it with water, nutrients, and vitamins and fermenting it naturally via solar energy, Finnish food scientists have produced a flour-like substance that is odorless, tastelessand nutritious and can be combined with almost anything – and seemingly doesn’t need massive amounts of power to produce it. It can be used as a building block for a wide range of products including alternative meat and dairy to cereal and bakery to entire meal replacements.
But in addition to Solein itself, the story of Singapore’s innovation in food sufficiency lies not in sprawling fields such as those found in the United States or in the terraced rice paddies characteristic of China and Southeast Asia, but inside skyscrapers, where some of the world’s most innovative agricultural technology, much of it borrowed from abroad, and experimentation can work its wonders while impervious to climate change.
Local food production is essential to any nation, but it is much more the case with Singapore, surrounded by nations whom it has traditionally regarded with suspicion, and from whom it imports substantial amounts of food. Almost since independence, the island republic has famously maintained a “poisoned shrimp” military defense designed to kill any nearby nation – Indonesia or Malaysia – tempted to swallow it, with more combat aircraft than Malaysia and Indonesia combined. Its aim is to feed itself as much as possible “in the event that overseas food supplies become unstable,” according to the Singapore Food Agency’s website. It “pays to have a level of self-sufficiency to tide us over the shortage.”
Despite the island state’s limited land and population density– it covers only 750 sq km, 22 percent of that from land reclaimed from the sea – nearly 700 hectares are allocated to more than 200 farms for the production of livestock, eggs, milk, aquarium and food fish, vegetables, fruits, orchids, ornamental and aquatic plants, as well as for the breeding of birds and dogs. The farms develop, adapt and showcase advanced technologies and techniques for intensive farming systems, and for the export of high-value, quality products and services to other tropical countries in the region, according to the Singapore Food Agency’s website.
In 2018, the government consolidated all state food-related functions previously under the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, the National Environment Agency and the Health Sciences Authority into the food agency in a bid to achieve what officials called the “30 by 30” objective, a state-backed plan seeking to ensure that local farms be capable of producing 30 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs locally by 2030.
That in turn is a part of the ambitious Singapore Green Plan, which includes planting a million more trees, quadrupling solar energy deployment by 2025, reducing waste sent to landfill by 30 percent by 2030, making at least 20 percent of schools carbon-neutral by 2030 and requiring that all newly registered cars be cleaner-energy models from 2030. The Singapore Food Agency gave nine farms US$39.4 million to help them ramp up production amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Singapore would seem to have the money and high-tech knowhow to pull it off, turning the traditional idea of farming on its head with high-yielding cultivators growing the crops of the future in the safety of high-rise buildings with stacks of kale, broccoli, and basil reaching into the clouds in a neon-lit clinically-clean environment free of insects and weather.
It hasn’t been smooth sailing. While cutting-edge agrotech companies may point the way forward with urban farmers toiling not in the blazing tropical sun but inside towers in controlled environments including manufacturing food out of air – and looking more like scientists than field hands, some have gone broke. The Straits Times recently reported how IFFI—one of the hottest biotech vertical farming companies—had to close. Although the company had the ability to produce 300 tonnes of vegetables a year, which found their way to the shelves of the popular FairPrice supermarket chain among others, and although the company received financial support from the Singapore Food Agency, it couldn’t turn a commercial success, a quandary faced by many of the new companies, not just in Singapore but across the world.
“With investors becoming more selective and conservative with their investments, funding is becoming harder to come by,” the Straits Times reported, “forcing many farms to be as prudent as possible and try to make returns on their investments. But this might be more difficult as they grapple with increased energy costs and relatively high labor costs.”
Exporting technology
While marijuana producers in Canada have been using hydroponic technologies for decades, the country’s agricultural producers have seen the dazzling benefits of Singapore’s indoor vertical farming techniques—in particular, A-Go-Grow technology—and have imported Singaporean tech to this end, which is important in a nation that suffers brutally cold winters and has to import much of its vegetables and fruits and thus has the need to develop indoor and vertical farming, despite its sprawling landmass.
Like other small nations such as Singapore, the Netherlands has been pioneering in agricultural robotics and vertical farming for years, with the result that the country has been able to supply the EU and the USA with significant amounts of produce and dairy for many years. Could Singapore do the same in Southeast Asia and farther afield? The country is a world leader in water reclamation and desalinization as a result of its concerns that Malaysia, from where it gets most of its water, could shut it off if political problems arise. In many of the indoor vertical farms, engineers employ gravity-based water pulley systems to reduce energy costs.
A-Gro-Grow’s low-water intensive urban farming, using high A-frame garden structures conceived by local Singaporean Jack Ng in 2009, is a successful model: “The rotation system does not need an electrical generator. It is powered by a unique gravity-aided water-pulley system that uses only one liter of water, which is collected in a rainwater-fed overhead reservoir. This method also boasts a very low carbon footprint as the energy needed to power one A-frame is the equivalent of illuminating just one 60-watt light bulb. The water powering the frames is recycled and filtered before returning to the plants. All organic waste on the farm is composted and reused.”
Thailand, in addition to Canada, has begun using A-Go-Grow technology, as have a handful of other nations. In Taiwan, an unseasonably cool March recently saw Hualien County—recently devastated by a massive earthquake—lose up to 30 percent of its mango crop. Rice prices have soared in Indonesia as a result of this year’s heat waves, and numerous other crops in Southeast Asian nations have been hard hit by the extreme temperatures. The allure of indoor farming should be obvious, especially looking ahead at a world with rapidly changing weather patterns.
Business can go sideways or awry for a variety of reasons. Vertivegies Pte Ltd. had to cancel new plans after running into issues with its Chinese supplier of hardware, while Sky Green has had to scale down operations for other reasons, in big blows to Singapore’s food industry. And Singaporeans have to pay more for their modern, locally-grown produce in the sky. As the Straits Times puts it: “This would mean seeking out customers who can appreciate the benefits that locally grown produce have over imported ones, and better yet, be willing to pay a small premium for it.”
Challenges aside, Singapore is onto a good thing. The country, the region, and the world—facing radical climate change coming much faster and stronger than many had imagined—need a solution. Producing food indoors using the latest technology is a huge step in the right direction for food security far and wide.
Gregory McCann is a frequent contributor to Asia Sentinel