A Manufacturer and a Food Caterer Among New Players Feeding Singapore’s Urban Farming Boom

August 10, 2021

SINGAPORE: In a small room tucked away on the second floor of a precision engineering factory in Tuas, pots of kale and lettuce stacked in vertical racks grow under the glow of pink-purple lights.

These light-emitting diode (LED) lights have been designed to shine at a customised spectrum that will help crops grow better. Smart sensors also keep tabs on temperature and humidity in the room, while a special water treatment system reduces bacteria growth.

In here, the goal is to find the best way to farm vegetables indoors, all with the use of technology.

“You can control everything, even how much nutrients or water is being used for each plant,” said Mr Nelson Lim, co-founder of I.F.F.I, which stands for Indoor Farm Factory Innovation.

“We want to bring indoor farming into something more precise, where you calculate the least input for the best output. That is precision farming,” he told CNA.

Mr Lim is also the chief executive of precision engineering firm TranZplus Engineering, which is the parent company of I.F.F.I. TranZplus’ two-storey office in Tuas now houses both a manufacturing facility for semiconductor components and a farming showroom.

“A lot of people ask me: ‘Nelson, are you crazy? You’re in engineering, why suddenly do farming?’ Actually, the two are not unrelated. We can put our engineering skills to good use in indoor farming,” Mr Lim said, while demonstrating the farming racks that can be adjusted according to height and size.

Robotics is another expertise that the company has incorporated into its farming solutions to not just improve the yield and quality of crops, but also workflow efficiencies.

For instance, automated machines that can perform seeding, transplanting, potting and harvesting tasks will be put to work at I.F.F.I’s mega indoor farm when ready at the end of this year.

(Left to right) I.F.F.I's general manager Veronica Lee, chief operating officer Kelvin Ng and co-founder Nelson Lim. (Photo: Tang See Kit)

SEEDING A DIVERSIFICATION

TranZplus’ venture into agriculture was first seeded in 2016 when it became one of the vendors for Panasonic’s indoor farm in Singapore.

“Initially, they just wanted to have a rack. Then we thought why not have racks that can be customised, why not put in an irrigation system and other types of automation?” Mr Lim recalled. “We worked out a prototype and they were impressed.”

The company kept on with research and development after that, while being involved in setting up three other small-scale farms. In 2019, it decided it had gained enough experience to give it a shot.

Mr Lim said the decision to venture into indoor farming was driven by “strong business potential”, partly on the back of Singapore’s “30 by 30” goal to produce 30 per cent of the country's nutritional needs locally by 2030.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the potential, with global disruptions to the harvesting, shipping and sale of food making it even more important for the country to have its own resources. Indoor farms can be the solution, he added.

Last September, I.F.F.I. became one of the nine urban farms to secure grants totalling S$39.4 million from the Singapore Food Agency.

Its 38,000 sq ft indoor farm, which remains under development at the JTC Space @ Tuas, will be using a soil-based cultivation method that allows more vegetable varieties to be planted.

When operational, the mega farm will be able to produce 800 to 1,000kg of vegetables, like nai bai and spinach, per day, said Mr Lim.

Another new player on the field is food caterer Kitchen Haus, which co-founded “farm-to-table” concept brand Frux Earth a few months ago.

With its core business facing a slow recovery amid the pandemic, the company has been diversifying actively in search of new opportunities over the past year.

Agriculture is “not unrelated territory”, chief executive Patrick Chan said. “It’s still part of the food ecosystem so when the opportunity came, I agreed instantly.”

It teamed up with home-grown urban farming company Metro Farm for the new venture. With the latter’s expertise, the farms under Frux Earth – three sites spanning 60,000 sq ft – are powered by an aquaponics system that converts fish waste into nutrients for the vegetables.

For instance, its 12,000 sq ft rooftop farm atop an industrial building in Bendemeer has eight fish tanks with red tilapia and jade perch. These fishes were chosen for their hardiness and ability “to produce more waste”, said Metro Farm’s director Chris Toh.

“We have a filter to separate the fish waste, which is then broken down by bacteria. Our system will then keep the nutrients flowing to the vegetables 24/7,” said the farm’s other director Brandon Toh, who added that the system is “self-sustainable” and keeps costs low.

The Bendemeer farm, with its 720 vertical plant towers, can harvest more than 30,000 stalks of vegetables, including purple lettuce and kale, a month. The fish will also be sold once they reach table size.

Mr Chan said: “This is a breath of fresh air for us and we pivoted because we want to jump on the trend of food sustainability.

“I think Metro Farm sees the value in us having the know-how of food preparing, catering and retail. And we partner them because it’s not easy to set up a farm and they are the experts.”

Metro Farm’s director Chris Toh (left) and Kitchen Haus' chief executive officer Patrick Chan (right) joined hands to form a new urban farming company Frux Earth. (Photo: Tang See Kit)

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Metro Farm, which started its first farm in Kranji almost nine years ago, noted that the local agriculture sector has become “much more vibrant”.

While the presence of new and bigger players means greater competition, the increased attention has also made it easier for businesses to secure farming sites in land-scarce Singapore, including vacant rooftops on both public and private buildings.

“In the past, we have to explain what is a rooftop farm and what we are doing but now, more landlords are opening up to the idea,” said Mr Brandon Toh, although he noted that not all rooftops are suitable given the need to take into consideration the additional loads of farming.

Frux Earth has plans to open three more urban farms over the next few months.

Its “farm-to-table” menu is in the works as it ramps up its crop production, while it is also gauging the interest for a weekly vegetable subscription service, said Mr Chan.

These “culture boxes”, as they are called, will be filled with 1 to 2kg worth of freshly harvested organic vegetables and delivered to the doorsteps of customers every week. For now, it has started supplying a few restaurants located near its farm at the Marina Country Club.

Frux Earth is planning to launch a weekly vegetable box subscription service. (Photo: Frux Earth)

Over at I.F.F.I, the protracted pandemic and its impact on labour and supplies of raw materials have caused some delays at its mega indoor farm which was initially scheduled to open in the middle of this year.

“We are catching up and hopefully we can have everything ready soon,” said Mr Lim. “Certainly, costs have also gone up with the increase in raw material prices, but we are managing that."

Meanwhile, the company is working on opening an “indoor farm pro-shop”.

“There will be a mini-farm set up for visitors to understand and raise awareness about indoor farming,” said I.F.F.I chief operating officer Kelvin Ng.

“If they like what they see and want to start their home cultivation system, they will also be able to purchase everything they need at the shop. We will even have consultants ready to guide you. It will be a one-stop shop about indoor farming.”

I.F.F.I. also sees opportunities beyond Singapore where they can serve as consultants or designers to those looking to set up indoor farms. For instance, in Russia where crop production is a challenge due to the cold climate.

Its technologies can also be deployed in “bite sizes” even in traditional food-producing countries as solutions to specific problems, such as water pollution.

Mr Ng said: “There are many opportunities emerging in the space of indoor farming, and we want to be bold and seize them.”

Lead Photo: I.F.F.I, an affiliate of precision engineering firm TranZplus Engineering, is looking to open its mega indoor farm in Tuas by the end of this year. (Photo: Tang See Kit)

Singapore: Mega-Farm, Research Center To Open By December 2021

&ever

“We’re really happy to have launched in Munich and consumers really like our harvest-on-demand concept,” says Franz Drack, Chief Marketing Officer at &ever. "We just need to see how to increase the accessibility of our solutions. I’d love to see 200 vertical farms in Europe with this technology in the next five years."

Although it all started in Hamburg, &ever is currently headquartered in Munich which is also where the grow tower showroom is located. In 2020, &ever opened its first commercial farm in Kuwait, spanning 3,400 m2 and with a daily output capacity of 550 kg. The farm provides its leafy greens to Kuwaiti restaurants and retailers. The company also recently launched a grow tower in an EDEKA Stadler+Honner “Die Frisch-Nachbarn” supermarket in Unterfôhring near Munich. 

Mega-farm and research center 
&ever is currently building a mega-farm in Singapore with support from the Singapore Food Agency, SFA, and the Economic Development Board, EDB, and will be launched by the end of 2021. The mega-farm will be 15m high and have an annual production capacity of up to 500,000 kg of leafy greens.

In addition to the mega-farm, &ever will be establishing Singapore as its global R&D center to accelerate knowledge development and transfer to the mega-farm. The R&D center will focus on improving energy use efficiency through optimized lighting strategies and improving crop quality by evaluating different seed and substrate combinations. Moreover, &ever will be working to develop non-invasive crop monitoring processes through vision systems.

“We’re getting tremendous support from our local partners EDB, SFA and A*Star; everyone is keen to get this farm online. This farm is what we are most excited about this year,” Franz notes. To better address consumer demand, &ever conducted market research in Singapore by speaking with potential consumers and foodservice providers. This research has allowed &ever to explore the balance between western and eastern leafy green species to be grown in the mega-farm.

“Our team under the lead of our country manager, Kerstin Köhler, have worked with food service providers who are very good at telling us what products are needed and wanted. Some products are very interesting for certain segments of the value chain, so we try to talk to a lot of different people,” says Franz.

&ever is continuing to focus on leafy greens, microgreens and herbs for the time being. While there is a lot of interest in fruits (like strawberries), Franz explains that the company is focused on keeping its product range simple to perfect the growing process. 

&ever's growing tower 

Rebranding efforts 
In recent months, the vertical farming industry has seen major players taking a new approach to product branding by using brightly colored packaging. &ever is also focused on bright, enticing packaging designed to represent the company’s values and production process.

“We will start using colors that represent what we’re actually doing. Yellow for the light, blue for the water and green for our greens. It allows the brand to stand out and visually signals to consumers that things are changing. This shows that we are a new type of agricultural company. Stay tuned for that in the second half of 2021.” explains Franz.

Franz also notes that &ever’s products are also sold living, whereas many indoor farms sell cut greens, packaged in clamshells or other packaging materials. Moreover, &ever is also looking into direct-to-consumer sales of leafy greens. 

In building its mega-farm, putting its products on European shelves and rebranding, &ever is eager to continue growing by getting consumers excited and developing more farm projects across the world.

&ever is a German agtech company offering three growing solutions, each addressing a different level of production. The &ever grow box is a small-scale system that allows growers to produce 15-30 kg of leafy greens per day in a small footprint. The company’s medium-sized solution is the &ever grow tower which is a small room containing a circular cultivation module.

Young plants are first transplanted in the inner circle and are gradually pushed further to the outer circles as new plants are introduced to the system. In pushing the plants further, the older plants receive more available space to continue growing without crowding neighboring plants. The grow towers provide a customizable output of 20-50 kg of leafy greens per day. Finally, &ever also develops large-scaled production system which it calls mega-farms.

For more information:
Franz Drack, CMO
&ever 
local@andever.de 
www.and-ever.com 

Publication date: Tue 8 Jun 2021
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© VerticalFarmDaily.com

Farm to Fork: This Millennial Urban Farmer Grows Vegetables On Carpark Rooftops in Singapore

Singapore Announced New Measures in April Aimed At Speeding Up Local Food Production Over The Next Six Months To Two Years.

By Vulcan Post

June 25, 2020

The ongoing battle against the COVID-19 outbreak and the resultant lockdowns imposed in many countries worldwide have put the spotlight on Singapore’s dependence on food imports and its vulnerability to global supply shocks.

The government has repeatedly assured its citizens that Singapore has sufficient food supplies, amid bouts of panic buying that gripped the country when Singapore raised the DORSCON level to Orange.

Although the panic buying has now eased, another cause for concern is that Singapore has a population of about 5.7 million people but it only produces about 10% of its food needs.

To tackle this food crisis, Singapore announced new measures in April aimed at speeding up local food production over the next six months to two years.

This includes providing a SGD 30 million grant to support production of eggs, leafy vegetables, and fish in the shortest time possible, and identifying alternative farming spaces, such as industrial areas and vacant sites.

As part of that project, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and the Housing Development Board (HDB) have launched a tender in May for rooftop farms on public housing car parks.

This means that the rooftops of a handful of multi-story carparks in Singapore will be converted for use to farm vegetables and other food crops from the later part of this year.

Farming hits the roof

The move to find alternative farming space in land-constrained Singapore is part of their strategy to meet the country’s 30 by 30 goal, which is to produce 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.

Local agritech startup Citiponics did not take part in the tender this time round, though it piloted SFA’s multi-story carpark rooftop farm project in Ang Mo Kio last year.

According to Danielle Chan, co-founder of Citiponics, its 1,800 square metres farm atop the carpark at Block 700 in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6 can grow between three and four tonnes of vegetables a month.

They grow up to 25 different types of vegetables naturally without the use of pesticides.

“We currently specialize in growing our own crossbreed of lettuces—Georgina Lettuces—and have also been growing other varieties such as nai bai, Italian basil, and Thai basil based on customers’ requests,” said Danielle.

Sharing more about the Ang Mo Kio site, she said they have been steadily producing pesticide-free vegetables on a monthly basis, supplying to nearby residents and consumers islandwide.

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Rooftop farm in Ang Mo Kio. Photo courtesy of Citiponics via Vulcan Post.

Beyond contributing to local food production, this pilot project has also generated “positivity,” which stems from community involvement when visitors get to know and see their food source.

“It brings us great joy to see the senior citizens enjoying their time as they work on farming activities as well as the support we have received from visitors who come to our community markets to self-harvest their produce,” said Danielle.

She added that they hire senior citizens from AWWA Community Home as well as part-time workers to help with farm maintenance.

“We believe that even if one does not have the technical agriculture know-how, they should be able to contribute to food production as well.”

Citiponics is a Singapore-grown urban farming company that started in 2016, which aims to grow safe produce through its zero-waste farming process.

It is co-founded by Danielle and her family friend Teo Hwa Kok, who has a “rich experience in agriculture.”

When agriculture meets tech

The 26-year-old is a National University of Singapore (NUS) graduate, who has worked in technology startups across Singapore and New York, as well as technology consulting companies such as IBM.

But with her tech background, why did she choose to be a ‘farmer’?

“I grew up in an agricultural environment and as such, the farm was always my playground. Growing up, I never had to worry about buying vegetables from the supermarket or doubting my food source. I had the blessing of getting all my vegetables supplies directly from the farm,” explained Danielle.

“Having personally witnessed the wastage as well as the inefficiencies in the traditional farming industry, I knew I wanted to go back to the farming industry to change the way farming is done traditionally as well as to share the blessing of the farm-to-table experience with others.”

Her tech background didn’t go to waste though. She made it a point to integrate technology into Citiponic’s farming processes.

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Citiponics at NTUC FairPrice. Photo courtesy of Ministry of Trade and Industry via Vulcan Post.

They have a proprietary vertical farming technology called Aqua-Organic System (AOS). It falls under a solid-based soilless culture, which is different from the likes of traditional farming and hydroponic farming system.

As every drop of water is kept in a close loop within the growing system, it helps to minimize water consumption, using one-tenth of hydroponics water consumption and one-hundredth of traditional farming water consumption.

Due to its vertical nature, it is also able to be seven times more productive than traditional farming.

As it is specially designed to provide a natural farming environment in order to preserve the nutrients value and natural taste of the vegetables, the technology is also pollutant-free and pesticide-free. It’s also anti-mosquito breeding, which makes it very suitable for farming within community and neighborhood areas.

“The AOS farming technology removes the complex technicalities of farming and we wanted to keep it that way to allow people of all ages and backgrounds to have a great experience when they get to farm with our systems,” said Danielle.

COVID-19 does not pose a huge business challenge

All of Citiponic’s farmed produce are segmented to home deliveries, nearby residents, and selected NTUC FairPrice outlets.

Despite their limited farming space, Danielle said that they see a constant stream of supply and sales.

It’s not so much a business challenge, she added, but the need to adapt to the new normal, hence the introduction of home deliveries and engaged logistics channel.

Although COVID-19 does not greatly impact its business, it serves as a timely reminder on the importance of accelerating our local food production.

This pandemic serves a time for us to reflect on how we can enhance our food resilience strategies.

Singapore steps up to be more food resilient

As Singapore is still largely dependent on food imports, the rooftop farming tender and local food production grants are definitely the right steps forward.

According to SFA, Singapore currently secures food supply from about 170 countries.

For instance, Singapore now imports oranges from Egypt, milk powder from Uruguay, eggs from Poland and shrimps from Saudi Arabia as part of its efforts to broaden food supplies.

Danielle is well-aware that food security, food sustainability and food safety are global issues, so she hopes to bring Citiponics’ farming solution to more countries.

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Citiponics’ Georgina lettuce sold at NTUC FairPrice. Photo courtesy of Citiponics via Vulcan Post.

“We are not only focused on food production, but also becoming an agritech solution provider. We have developed agriculture technology and designed farming solutions that are suitable for tropical countries, and hope to extend the applicability of our expertise and farming technology to temperate countries as well,” she added.

Citiponics is also looking at scaling its operations to enhance its contribution to local food resilience and grow more communities through the introduction of hyperlocal Citiponics urban vertical farms in various neighborhoods of Singapore.

“We envision Citiponics as a supportive environment that is able to cultivate the next generation of urban farmers and agritech innovators.”

This article was first published by Vulcan Post.

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From Macau's Casinos To a Kallang Farm: The Gaming Industry Professional Who Now Grows Baby Spinach

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Mr Ray Poh founded Artisan Green in 2018. (Photo: Artisan Green)

By Cindy Co

23 May 2020

SINGAPORE: For five years, Mr. Ray Poh mingled with high rollers in Macau, which has been dubbed the gambling capital of the world. 

It was a lucrative career filled with opportunities to travel frequently. But in 2015, Mr. Poh gave all of that up.

“I did think about making it a career,” said Mr. Poh, who had studied in Australia since the age of 12. “But I think at the end of the five years, I realized that I’d been away for most of my life from my mum, who was back in Singapore. That was one of the main factors (that led me to leave).”

It took him a year to completely leave the industry, but by 2016, Mr. Poh had decided on a very different career path: Urban farming.

His indoor hydroponics farm, Artisan Green, specializes in growing baby spinach. The 3,200 sq ft farm is located in Kallang in central Singapore, with its entire set-up costing Mr. Poh slightly under a million dollars.

Although Artisan Green was founded in 2018, a year before Singapore announced its ’30 by 30’ goal to produce 30 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs locally by 2030, it is part of an increasing wave of indoor farms looking to use sustainable methods to grow to produce locally.

In April, the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources announced a S$30 million 30x30 Express grant for the agri-food industry to speed up the production of commonly consumed food items like eggs, vegetables, and fish.

READ: COVID-19 pandemic highlights importance of strengthening Singapore's food security, say experts

READ: Interest in urban farming sprouts amid COVID-19 outbreak

A FAMILY BUSINESS

While casino gaming was never something he had been interested in, a chat with his mother post-graduation was enough to convince Mr. Poh to enter the family business.

“I was thinking of entering the banking industry, but the thought of being behind a desk didn’t appeal to me much. So we were having a discussion and she said, why don’t you give this a try. Your father needs some help in the company, perhaps you can go out and see what you can do,” he said.

Initially, he did business development with his father’s manufacturing company, developing products such as slot machines. As he became more involved in product design, so his interest in the industry grew, he said.

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The exterior of Artisan Green. (Photo: Artisan Green)

After a year, his boss convinced him that he ought to head to Macau to advance his understanding of the industry, which turned out to be a fruitful experience.

“I think at the very start when I first went there, I didn’t know anything or anyone in Macau, so the main thing I did was to network around. I met a lot of good people, and at the same time, obviously, you meet people that are not so good.

“What I did was learn what to do and what not to do. It was a very good experience,” he said.

Being new to the industry also meant that people did not take him seriously. Mr. Poh had to work hard to brush up his knowledge on the casino gaming industry by doing research, reading industry magazines, and making friends who could teach him – skills which would later put him in good stead to enter a completely different industry.

CONTRIBUTING TO SUSTAINABILITY

When he told his family that he wanted to move out of casino gaming, they were supportive of his decision, said Mr. Poh.

“I think from the business aspect of things, it was more of a diversification. I’ve always thought that agriculture is something that’s evergreen. People will always need to eat. Whereas casino gaming is something like the entertainment sector,” he said, adding that he wanted to “do something more to contribute to the sustainability segment”.

“At first I thought about doing landscaping, but I didn’t really want to go back to study more. So I thought farming might be an easy way in. 

“But I was very wrong about how easy it was. After doing the research, I quite naively thought that I would do this for about a year and network around, meet more people, and then move into landscaping. But it just took me down towards farming all the way,” he said.

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Artisan Green has 120 growing racks, with six layers in each rack. (Photo: Artisan Green)

Just like when he started out in Macau, Mr. Poh had “zero knowledge” of the agriculture sector, and people also did not take him seriously when he started.

“I knew I had to build up my knowledge from ground-up again,” he said.

He attended courses and conferences, forged relationships with people in the industry, watched Youtube videos, and built prototypes.

Building the prototypes gave him the confidence to decide that he wanted to build his entire farm from scratch. After leasing space from Mapletree and procuring all his supplies and tools, Mr. Poh set himself to work as the main contractor of his own farm.

Save for the electrical wiring and the plumbing, Mr. Poh put the entire 3,200 sq ft farm together with his own hands over the course of three months.

“When I was building the farm, I was there from 9 am to 10 pm. I’d only eat one meal a day during the building because I didn’t want to waste time. So I would only eat one really huge brunch and then just work the entire day in the farm,” he said.

It was challenging work, as he did all the sawing, drilling, and lifting and even suffered a back injury from hunching over and moving around too much. While he admitted that he should have gotten a partner to build the farm with him in hindsight, Mr. Poh said that the process was necessary.

“Now that I’ve gone through this, I can safely say that I know pretty much everything in the farm. I’ve sourced for every single piece of equipment by myself which makes it even easier for me to understand other people’s systems.

“I can look at other people’s systems, I can derive how it’s built, how it’s done, and that experience isn’t something you can get from reading books or watching tutorials online,” he said.

WHAT KEEPS HIM GOING

Even with his extensive research, his lack of science and engineering knowledge posed challenges for him.

“I didn’t really do chemistry, so that was kind of hard to pick up, and I knew that I needed to get the foundational knowledge of farming in terms of the science aspect to be able to do well in it,” he said, as science was an integral part of farming.

He also had to engage professional engineers to help him ensure the farm was built well.

This was in addition to the time he had to sacrifice in those early months, when he was just starting out, with many weekends spent at the farm just to make sure that everything was running well.

And even with the farm up and running, the team also ran into other problems, such as nutrient deficiency issues for their spinach.

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Artisan Green's team packing spinaches. (Photo: Artisan Green)

But what kept Mr. Poh going was his desire to “see the final product”.

“And we’re quite proud of what we’ve done with this current farm. We’ve had people from the industry – from the US, Europe – coming to visit us and they were quite impressed with the farm we’ve built. They told that it was comparable to some of the more advanced overseas farms as well.

“Hearing that gives us the motivation and a stronger belief in what we do.”

FUTURE PLANS

In the short-term, Artisan Green hopes to scale up its production from its current 30kg to 250kg of vegetables per week.

Although Malaysia’s Movement Control Order has temporarily disrupted the farm’s supply of equipment which they require to scale up, Mr. Poh is hoping to at least double the farm’s output by the end of the “circuit breaker” period and to hit 100kg per week by the end of the quarter.

In the longer-term, Mr. Poh is also looking to build his second farm – this time bigger, and with a wider variety of crops. But rather than growing specialty crops, Mr. Poh said he now wants to start growing crops such as Chinese cabbage, which he says there is a bigger demand for in Singapore.

“The next farm will have to be more automated, from end-to-end. That’s what our future goal is: to build the second farm and also to grow different crops, not just baby spinach, and work towards something where we can fulfill the whole ’30 by 30’ vision by the Government,” he said.

Source: CNA/cc

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Tagged Topics

• urban farm farming environment

VIDEO: Can Vertical Farms Fix The Future of Food?

May 25, 2020

jamiemoses288

Singapore has only 1% of its land available for agriculture, so it imports 90% of its food requirements. The government is looking to curb this dependence on outside food sources under a program titled ‘30 by 30,’ which aims to allow Singapore to grow 30% of its produce by the year 2030. Local vertical farms like Sustenir are at the forefront of bringing about this change. VICE visits the sustainable start-up to understand the future of food.

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Nine Multi-Storey Carpark Rooftops in Singapore To Be Converted To Urban Farms

SINGAPORE - The rooftops of a handful of multi-storey carparks in Singapore will be converted for use to farm vegetables and other food crops from the later part of this year.

The tender for nine such sites was launched on Tuesday (May 12) by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA). 

They include five single sites in Ang Mo Kio, Tampines, Toa Payoh, Hougang, and Choa Chu Kang and two cluster sites - which comprises two sites each - in Sembawang and Jurong West. The size of the sites ranged from 1,808 sq m - or one-third of a football field - to 3,311 sq m - or three-fifths of a football field. 

Each site is up for tender for a term of three years. For cluster sites, the successful tenderer will be awarded all sites within the cluster.

The launch is one of the strategies adopted by the SFA to increase local food production as part of Singapore's 30 by 30 goal - to produce 30 percent of the country's nutritional needs locally by 2030, said SFA and the Housing Board (HDB) in a joint statement.

Last month, SFA also launched the 30 x 30 Express grant to help local farms accelerate the production of fish, leafy vegetables and eggs over the next six to 24 months. Local farms produced about 14 percent of leafy vegetables, 26 percent of eggs and 10 percent of fish consumed in the country last year.

The ongoing battle against the Covid-19 outbreak and the resultant lockdowns imposed in many countries around the world have put the spotlight on Singapore's dependence on food imports and its vulnerability to global supply shocks. The Republic currently imports more than 90 percent of its food supply.

During the supplementary budget debate last month, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said that Covid-19 also underscored the importance of further strengthening Singapore's supply chain resilience and food security. He added that the Government will continue to ensure a stable supply of food and essential items by having a robust, multi-pronged strategy.

SFA said that it will continue to work with HDB to launch more multi-storey carpark rooftop sites for urban farming by public tender in the second half of this year, a move that is also in line with HDB's Green Towns Programme, which seeks to cool HDB towns through the use of greenery, such as on carpark rooftops.

Last month, the SFA said that it was also working to identify other spaces on the island - apart from multi-storey carparks - suitable for commercial farming, including industrial sites.

Mr Melvin Chow, senior director of SFA' s food supply resilience division, said that the launch of the tender for the nine sites comes in the wake of growing interest from the industry and the public towards urban farming in community spaces, following the launch of the agency's pilot multi-storey carpark rooftop farm in Ang Mo Kio last year.

"Residents in the area have been able to enjoy fresh produce from the farm at nearby supermarkets, and can witness first-hand the hard work involved in bringing our food from farm to fork," said Mr Chow.

Mr Teo Hwa Kok, founder of Citiponics, said that his company planned to take part in the latest tender and expand its production capacity beyond its Ang Mo Kio site, but that would be dependent on further on-site assessments.

He added that prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, various government organisations already had plans to open up such alternative spaces for food production but the decision to bring them forward in the light of the current situation showed "incredible support" in driving food resilience in Singapore.

Food security expert, Professor Paul Teng, said that the launch of the tender was a timely one as any additional space would mean more production in the short term.

"Initiatives like this are never too late as it is possible to convert unused space - such as rooftops - into productive vegetable gardens yielding produce for consumption or sale within as short a time as six months," he said.

The success of rooftop farms, however, will depend on many factors, including the choice of vegetables to grow and the growing method, Prof Teng added.

"While a dozen or so rooftop farms may not significantly affect the availability of vegetables as a whole in the country, any amount that is locally produced goes that extra step to reduce our dependency on imports.

"It also builds up the spirit of self-sufficiency and valuing fresher produce with low energy footprints."

More details on the tender are available on GeBiz and on SFA's website.

By Vanessa Liu | The Straits Times | May 12, 2020