Can 1% of Singapore’s land feed its people?

From fish farms bobbing in the Straits of Johor to industrial warehouses and the rooftops of hotels downtown, urban farming is all the rage in Singapore. Covid-19 has given the country, which produces only a tiny fraction of what its people eat, a big scare. Dependence on neighbours for sustenance is a huge vulnerability the government says it’s determined to rectify.
Developing agriculture almost from scratch doesn’t come easy. Obstacles include a shortage of labour, competition from lower-cost economies elsewhere in Asia and a chronic scarcity of space. How the nation addresses these hurdles will say a lot about whether food self-sufficiency is a fad or a smart deployment of state muscle.
The Singapore Food Agency is dispensing millions of dollars to solve this existential challenge. While food supplies have held up during the pandemic, some shelves were emptied of staples like rice and instant noodles in the early days. A few months ago, truckloads of chickens from Malaysia perished while drivers waited for hours at Covid checkpoints.
“Nobody contemplated the Causeway shutting down or air freight becoming more difficult,” said Benjamin Swan, co-founder and chief executive officer of Sustenir Group, referring to one of two road links to Malaysia. His company, whose backers include sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings, grows vegetables vertically in a warehouse in Singapore’s northern suburbs. “We got lucky this time. Next pandemic, who knows?”
All farming in Singapore is urban. One of the most densely populated countries, you can drive across it in about half an hour. At independence in 1965, roughly a quarter of the city-state’s land was devoted to agriculture. Now it’s closer to 1%.
In the decades between, mile after mile was cleared for high-rise public housing, malls, schools and highways. The population has also swollen to 5.7 million from about 2 million as the republic grew from a backwater to a commercial hub. Gross domestic product per capita is about $65,000, among the highest in the world. For all that success, Singapore is heavily reliant on suppliers overseas for the basics of modern life: food, electricity, water and labor. The government has been working quietly for years to reduce this reliance on neighbours, with whom relations have oscillated. (Indonesia violently opposed the creation of Malaysia in 1963, of which Singapore was briefly part.)
The nation’s food goal is nominally modest: source 30% of nutrition needs locally by the end of the decade, up from about 10% now. But after years of prioritising finance, aviation, shipping, petrochemicals and tourism, it’s a significant shift of emphasis. “For years, Singapore didn’t have to think about providing its own food,” said Farshad Shishehchian, chief executive officer of Blue Aqua International Pte, which rears shrimp and fish in vast tanks. “The view was: ‘I have money, I can buy it.’ Now there is a realisation, especially after Covid hit, that food is more essential than anything.”
The government’s focus is on eggs, vegetables and marine fare.

—Bloomberg