this
is the singapore that we all know it's
modern
futuristic incredibly green and home
some of our world's most
impressive buildings from airports to
hotels and
even floating apple stores but there's
one thing
you won't really find here
farmland
[Music]
singapore currently imports 90 of its
food supply
that means when something like say a
global pandemic or geopolitical tensions
disrupt the supply chain
being able to produce your own food
within your own borders
suddenly becomes really important
to make its food supply more resilient
the singaporean government has laid out
an ambitious goal
produce 30 of its own food by 2030
but unused land in singapore is hard to
come by
so urban farms are popping up inside
outside and
everywhere in between as the world's
urban population continues to grow
these might just be the farms of the
future and construction will need to
know how to build them
[Music]
today singapore's population is 100
urbanized and traditional farmland makes
up just one percent of the city's
landmass
but it hasn't always been this way
[Music]
agriculture has never been a huge part
of singapore's economy
in the 1960s it accounted for around
four percent of gdp
but as singapore continued to invest in
urban development
economic focus shifted away from farming
and towards manufacturing
and by the early 2000s agriculture's
role in singapore's economy was almost
non-existent we have lost
probably generations of knowledge and
also
participation in in food production uh
in you know in our country so i wanted
to see what i could do
to sort of really like that a little bit
that's bjorn lowe a digital marketer
turned urban farmer
who co-founded edible garden city
we've built 260 edible gardens in
singapore
whether it's for homes hotels
restaurants on top of shopping malls
in schools and then in a lot of
various underutilized land around the
city
over the last decade bjorn has seen the
sector shift from being led by smaller
farmers like himself
to getting major government and industry
investment so
you have a lot of big commercial players
coming in
whether it's from the fish farms or the
egg farms
you know we you have uh technology
providers coming from holland
uh from japan wanting to use singapore
as
a platform as a launch pad for their
technology
it has become a well oiled ecosystem
or almost an ecosystem at this point
in a sense the groundwork has already
been laid for edible landscaping in
singapore
thanks to a 2009 city planning policy
called
lush which stands for landscaping for
urban spaces and high rises
it requires developers to incorporate
greenery into their plans and has helped
give rise to a massive landscaping
industry in the city in 2017
lush was updated to include a provision
that allowed rooftop farms
to count towards the required landscape
replacement area of a building
now with the government's 30 by 30 push
to produce more of its own food
urban farming looking like it could have
its own renaissance building
quite literally on top of the success of
lush
so singapore is looking at a strategy of
increasing production from that one
percent of land
true technology approaches whether it's
building vertical farms
factory indoor farms battery farm
production systems for eggs
and intensive agriculture systems
right now you're probably picturing
something like this and to some degree
you're right
indoor farming is part of singapore's
plan artisan green grows spinach in a
controlled indoor environment using
water instead of soil and pesticides
everything from the light to the
temperature can be optimized for the
specific crops
sky greens uses hydraulic power to
rotate and irrigate crops in modular
vertical frames
the racks can be stacked up to 9 meters
and housed in outdoor greenhouses
but while controlled environments can
help avoid some of the pitfalls of
traditional farming like
water pollution caused by pesticide
runoff the process can be quite
energy intensive and after labor energy
and technology costs it can be hard for
urban farmers to compete with the price
of imports
we know that the food system is
challenged because
of the approaches of industrialized
production by creating control
environment agriculture
warehouses of plant factories for
example
we're falling back into the same space
so while once we have that as one
approach
which is highly publicized and focused
on
we need alternative approach to that
one alternative to growing crops inside
buildings is to simply build farms on
top of them
in partnership with the singapore food
agency city cityponix opened a pilot
commercial farm on the rooftop of a
multi-story car park
where it grows lettuce spinach and basil
or basil if you're watching in the u.s
using its hydroponic vertical farming
racks and
edible garden city has designed urban
farms to live on top of shopping malls
car parks and even in an unused outdoor
jacuzzi
the government's making more space
available for larger scale farms too
since 2020 it's offered up to at least
16 carpark rooftop sites to be rented
out for three years as urban farms
in addition to contributing to the 30 by
30 goal the government said urban farms
can also help to cool the city through
rooftop greenery design firms are also
looking to the urban island as they
think about the future of sustainable
design
gensler's come up with ideas to
incorporate farming solutions into park
benches
building facades and even ceilings and
arab visited singapore back in 2019 to
explore the future of urban agriculture
but when it comes to urban farming going
from concept to construction
is only half the battle the biggest
challenge of all may be getting people
to
actually eat the food especially when it
comes with a higher price tag
it really requires everyone to
participate in it
right whether it is growing that leafy
greens at home and understanding that
process
or then starting community farms within
you know their hdb
blocks to drive a community effort to
food growing
i think that is that is really important
because we may never hit the 30 by 30 if
we don't have a whole society approach
because industry can only do that much
government can only do that much
so everyone needs to participate
singapore
isn't the first to turn to urban farming
in the 1990s cuba began building its
own urban farming infrastructure out of
necessity because of the collapse of the
soviet union which led the country to
lose roughly half of its oil imports
and today cities including sao paulo
seoul and tokyo
all have their own urban farming
initiatives
what makes singapore unique is that it's
essentially building an agriculture
industry from the ground up
what if we can develop and maintain a
purposeful landscape or
edible landscape and if we can start to
build a landscape
nutritional index instead of how much
greenery there is we can start to count
how much carbohydrates
there is in this given development uh
how much protein are we producing from
the root vegetables or or the moringa
tree
the leaves are high in protein it can
become
a later food bank to build a layer of
resiliency
for the state and that potentially can
get us
to hitting the 30 by by 2030.
right now singapore is a kind of test
case for modern day urban farming
if it takes off then it could serve as a
blueprint for how we build the food
resilient cities of the future
but only if everyone gets on board
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