Singapore Makes Room For Allotment Gardens As Urban Farming Takes Root
Linked by Michael Levenston
Singapore now has more than 1,000 allotment gardens in a dozen of its national parks. Each is a raised planter bed measuring 2.5 meters by 1 meter, and can be leased for three years for S$57 ($42) annually.
By Rina Chandran
Reuters
Apr 15, 2019
Excerpt:
Rain or shine, every day for the past year, Kanti Kagrana walks a short distance from his son’s flat to Singapore’s HortPark, a national park where he grows chillies, eggplant and spinach in his allotment garden.
Kagrana, a 60-something native of India, is among a growing community of urban farmers in Singapore, which introduced allotment gardens in November 2017, modeled after England’s program which dates back to at least the 19th century.
“I enjoy gardening, but there is not enough space in my son’s flat,” said Kagrana, who has two plots.
“This gives me something to do, and I take the produce home so we save some money, as well,” he said as he turned the soil with a spade.
Agriculture makes up only about 1 percent of Singapore’s land area, but urban farming – including vertical and rooftop farms – is fast becoming popular.
Singapore last year topped the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Food Security Index for the first time, scoring high on metrics such as affordability and availability.