ABSTRACT
Countries reliant on food imports like Singapore were recently affected by the Russo-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as both events increased the prices of staple foods. To mitigate this situation, Singapore’s rooftop farms focused on cultivating mass-consumed affordable Asian vegetables to substitute those that need to be imported. For Singapore, food supply becomes an existential threat if there are disruptions to the supply chain. Urban rooftop farming expands domestically grown options. Companies like Comcrop aims to provide vegetables in short supply within 30 days to the extent that there is enough to share (JTC, 2019). Land spaces in densely populated Singapore is scarce and the city-state has some of the most expensive property prices in the world. Therefore, the only real solution for the urban farmers is high-density farming with increased productivity and output. One model that has been formulated is supplying vegetables to the tenants of the same buildings where the rooftop farms are located. Comcrop serves as a model of a one-stop food supply unit that can be replicated in other Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) factories and form an entire local food supply chain (JTC, 2019). The rooftop farming stakeholders are banking on skills and technologies to enhance food security and reverse or arrest the imagery of farming as a declining sunset industry. They look towards Japan and their energy-conserving and automated food factories operated by skilled labour (JTC, 2019). Comcrop also taps into automation to relieve manpower shortages, including those related to pest control and lighting controls for higher yields of leafy green vegetables like pak choy, lettuce and mizuna (JTC, 2019).
Keywords: rooftop, Singapore, urban farming, automation, food security
INTRODUCTION
During the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in 2022, food security was highlighted in Singapore when several regional countries banned or restricted exports of key foods to the city-state (JTC, 2019). Even food-growing countries dependent on food imports restricted their food supplies for domestic use as the Russo-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic both hiked up the prices of staple foods (JTC, 2019). Therefore, Singapore’s rooftop farms are very focused on their targets, goals and objectives in mitigating this supply situation with an eye for future crises. The focus of the rooftop farms is on cultivating reasonably priced mass-consumed Asian vegetables (especially those imported from other countries) to mitigate near-future food security challenges and not waste resource on niched novelty items like square watermelons that the local housewives are unlikely to purchase at large supermarket chains like NTUC (JTC, 2019).
Viewing food supply as an existential issue, especially after the food supply disruptions of the pandemic era, urban rooftop farms is an attempt to increase the amount of food that is domestically grown. Comcrop Chairman/Founder Allan Lim painted a hypothetical scenario. He hypothesized a vegetable-producing country that Singapore relies on suddenly experiencing problems with their applied pesticides and their vegetables subsequently becomes un-exportable. Comcrop wants to be able to supply those vegetables in short-supply within 30 days, to the extent that, even though volume may be lower than usual, there is enough to go around to share (JTC, 2019). Such crisis thinking has led to the mushrooming of rooftop farms. At a minimum, 12 of these rooftop farms emerged in Singapore by 30 July 2022 after the state began renting out the plots in 2020 to increase domestic food output as Singapore’s 5.5 million population imports above 90% of its food needs (Liang, 2022).
Food security had always been on the minds of urban rooftop farming stakeholders. Comcrop started as a project for individuals to farm in the Bukit Panjang community farm in 2011, and then the participants realized the seriousness of food security given that Singapore depended heavily on imports (JTC, 2019). In response, Comcrop evolved from its inaugural open patch to a rooftop farm at *SCAPE, and then onto the current rooftop greenhouses at Woodlands (JTC, 2019). *SCAPE is Singapore's inaugural commercialized rooftop farm located in a skyscraper/mall in the bustling shopping district of Orchard Road and *SCAPE farms have since proliferated to Singapore’s northern region of Woodlands that is comparatively less densely-populated and proximate to southern Malaysia (Ee, 2015). Currently, Singapore’s domestic food supply is derived mostly from 238 state-subsidized licensed high-tech farms (2020 official figures) and, according to the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), some of these farms already turned profitable and can expand their production to jack up profits (Liang, 2022). SFA said in an interview with BBC News: "Food security is an existential issue for Singapore. As a globally connected small city-state with limited resources, Singapore is vulnerable to external shocks and supply disruptions. …This is why it is important that we continuously take steps to secure our essential resources" (Liang, 2022).
Some of Singapore’s internationally well-known companies are involved in the urban rooftop farming projects. Comcrop, the firm behind Singapore’s first rooftop farm at *SCAPE, has a vision where one “Imagine[s] a world where high-tech “plant factories” grow fresh produce for every neighborhood” and aims to construct Asia’s biggest commercial rooftop farm at 36,000 square feet, consisting of six greenhouses on the rooftops of JTC’s Woodlands developments (JTC, 2019). Woodlands is located at the northern section of Singapore. The rooftop urban farms in the public housing estates are typically surrounded by tower blocks in the urban areas and resemble nothing like traditional agricultural sites.
Urban farmer Eyleen Goh farms on the carpark decks and tall buildings in Singapore, scaling up to meet the demand of up to 400kg of vegetables daily from vegetable sellers nearby (Liang, 2022). She remarked: "Singapore is quite small but we have many car parks. It is pretty much the dream to have farms [here] to meet the needs of residents in the community" (Liang, 2022). Bigger players in rooftop farming like Comcrop also have the same intention to utilize more carpark spaces. Given there is a socio-political consensus for Singapore to cut down on car ownership (and hence more projected rooftop carpark spaces), this is a factor working in the rooftop farmers’ favour (JTC, 2019).
One of the Comcrop’s farms utilized the former 15 Woodlands Loop rooftop carpark to supply the same building’s food manufacturing company and its associated firms with vegetables that can be cooked or made into salads by them (JTC, 2019). Smaller-scale rooftop farmers like Goh's farm is approximately 1/3 the size of a football field with employees extracting, trimming, boxing choy sum (leafy green used in ethnic Chinese cuisines) and re-potting seedlings, and she commented that harvests occur daily: "We are harvesting every day. Depending on the vegetables we are growing, it can range from 100kg to 200kg to 400kg per day" (Liang, 2022). The farm required the expenditure of S$1 million (US$719,920) in a year, mostly spent on speedy harvesting equipment at the SG Veg Farms, salaries for 10 workers, rent of approximately S$90,000 annually for the land space, including a second car park space (Liang, 2022). Despite some government subsidies, Goh is waiting for the projects to become profitable (Liang, 2022).
CHALLENGES
The work of the pioneering batch of urban rooftop farmers like Eyleen Goh coincided with the era of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as Goh indicated:
"Our setting up period happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, so logistics were way more expensive and took a longer time…Moreover, this was the first rooftop car park tender awarded [by the government] so the process was very new to everyone". (Liang, 2022)
Therefore, there appeared to be a steep learning curve for this pioneering group of farmers. However, technology can smoothen out the curve. In generating employment and benefitting the community at large, the high-tech automated system enables special needs of individuals and the elderly (especially suitable for packaging and harvesting) to work in the farms and it becomes increasingly easier to do so without required high technical skills as the farms implement technologies on a greater scale (JTC, 2019).
Another challenge was that land spaces in densely populated Singapore is limited in size, leading to expensive land prices and some of the world's costliest property prices, and so some farmers had to relocate to a more affordable place due to the expensive rental rates of some carpark spaces (Liang, 2022). Therefore, the only real solution is high-density farming with optimized productivity and output. For example, operating in a factory-like environment with a standard routine for workers to follow to maximize productivity, it is projected that Comcrop can churn out 15 times more vegetables per square metre than conventional farming on soil (JTC, 2019).
MITIGATING COSTS
Nicholas Goh, another urban rooftop farmer, says he has managed to become profitable by charging individuals a monthly payment to harvest vegetables at his farm, a feature that is popular with families in the surrounding areas because "it is a community kind of approach, rather than a commercial approach" (Liang, 2022). Another interesting and innovative idea that has popped up is for rooftop farmers to supply vegetables to the tenants in the same building where the rooftop carpark is located. Provision of primary produce to an industrial building’s tenants is a one-stop food supplying model that can be reproduced in other Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) factories in the future to form an entire value chain of food supply (JTC, 2019). JTC is a renowned pioneer in constructing industrial parks in Singapore. It also builds industrial parks for overseas clients, highlighting potential for rooftop farming projects in those countries too.
Yet another urban farmer, Mark Lee, coped with the costs by relocating to an industrial building that comes with a "negligible" rent, explaining: "Vegetables are ultimately just vegetables. You can get it at the freshest and best quality but there is limitation to how much one would pay. We're not talking about truffles here" (Liang, 2022). In cutting costs, Comcrop CEO Peter Barber argue that they are farming on little-utilized land and rooftops and avoiding indoor farms with higher rentals due to the lower costs of these underutilized spaces in growing reasonably priced greens for local supermarkets (JTC, 2019).
Professor William Chen, faculty member of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Director of the NTU food science and technology program, advocated for more support for urban farms: "There are measures in place such as productivity grants from SFA, and regular farmers' markets to encourage consumers to buy more local produce. Perhaps helping local farmers to adopt simple technologies... may be considered" (Liang, 2022). In fact, the authorities have been supportive. The authorities were helpful in facilitating these projects with an accent on public safety so new regulations were in place for this pioneering industry which got a helping hand from renowned infrastructure/industrial builder JTC that advocated on behalf of the rooftop farmers and influenced the government departments positively (JTC, 2019). JTC’s voice carries weight as it is a well-known Government Linked Company (GLC) amongst the major Singapore economic stakeholders.
The rooftop farming stakeholders believe that skills and technologies can lead to food security and, with that, comes a reversal of thinking that farming is a declining industry, particularly with inspiration drawn from Japan where farming plants are energy-saving, highly automated and operated by skilled manpower in an energy-efficient manner (JTC, 2019). Likewise, Comcrop utilizes efficient automation tech to alleviate manpower needs, e.g. its Woodlands *SCAPE herb enclosed greenhouse farm utilizes pest control, light/shade control automated growing systems for higher daily yields of 40-50 kg of leafy vegetables like pak choy (also spelled as bak choy), lettuce and mizuna (JTC, 2019).
Comcrop farms implemented automation to cultivate pesticide-free green vegetables for local consumption and, other than cultivating Asian vegetables for food security, Comcrop is also dipping into agriculture research, but Comcrop Founder Allan Lim admitted: “But right now, we don’t have deep agriculture research capabilities in Singapore. This is something we need to work on” (JTC, 2019). To mitigate this and to enhance food security, Comcrop is setting their local seed bank for sustainable future supplies while allowing access to them for technologists who can extract the seeds’ essence and re-engineer them for better yields (JTC, 2019).
Sonia Akter, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, opined that high operating costs may be a main challenge for urban farmers: "Singapore is offering a lot of subsidies and financial support to entrepreneurs who are working in this space. The question is whether these farms will be able to operate and be commercially viable when the government support stops flowing. Giving up is not an option. The more challenging it is, the more rewarding it will be" (Liang, 2022). Perhaps, this passion of challenging conventional has driven more individuals to join the rooftop farming projects. For the founder/management of Comcrop, they are gratified at the groundswell of passionate response to their projects, including Google-qualified individuals, who, despite less competitive pay, are keen to join them, and their monthly free tours are constantly oversubscribed with more requests for volunteer work (receiving about 20 emails daily from all walks of life) (JTC, 2019).
CONCLUSION
By 2030, Singapore desires to have an output that covers 30% of the food it consumes domestically (i.e. more than triple the current output) (Liang, 2022). There is a caveat. Given that Singapore has not prioritized agricultural development for half a century, Comcrop Chairman/Founder Allan Lim opined there is a need for reliance on overseas help and studying their modern agriculture systems, e.g. Japanese pride in consuming their own high-quality (though pricier) Made-in-Japan farm produce that are placed in a particular section of their supermarkets (JTC, 2019). For complete replication of high-tech rooftop farming from ground-up, it would take a long time to reach productive fruition, so Comcrop is tapping into their Japanese suppliers’ seeds for growing premium vegetables to cultivate in Singapore, with the hope of picking out successful experiments to produce nutritious, pesticide-free and well-priced agricultural products (JTC, 2019).
For some of the rooftop farming stakeholders, there is another specific social cause for their enterprise besides food supply issues, they hope to provide employment as well. Comcrop founder Allan Lim also revealed the mission statement of his organization: “Our mission is to feed our community. We have three key principles: first, to use marginalized land to grow food; second, to employ technology that enable our communities, especially those who are marginalised in employment; and third, to do it as sustainably as possible” (JTC, 2019). The initial estimation by Comcrop was that their employees would mainly consist of retirees or individuals with spare time on their hands, but it turned out that the personnel managing the farms on a fulltime basis were mainly in their 30s or individuals applying for permanent jobs/internships in their 20s (JTC, 2019).
Ultimately, the projects also contribute to the overall economy. In the process of constructing these high-tech rooftop farms, Comcrop has spawned new industrial spin-offs such as offering specialized one-stop construction services to design/construct high-tech indigenous greenhouse, while collaborating with American, Dutch and Japanese firms to design new hydroponic technologies and workflows that suit the local conditions in Singapore (JTC, 2019). The eventual goal of Comcrop is to install rooftop farms in every neighborhood with local employment churning out the freshest and most affordable pesticide-free products to nearby supermarkets that can last longer than the marginally cheaper imported vegetables (JTC, 2019).
REFERENCES
Ee, Jamie. Growing Crops On Rooftops: Pushing Frontiers With Urban Farming.1 Jul 2015. Retrieved from https://www.psd.gov.sg/challenge/ideas/feature/growing-crops-on-rooftops...
JTC (Jurong Town Corporation). Rooftop Farms around Singapore: Comcrop’s vision to harvest new ideas. JTC website. 27 Feb 2019. Retrieved from https://www.jtc.gov.sg/about-jtc/news-and-stories/feature-stories/roofto...
Liang, Annabelle. How Singapore is turning multi-storey car parks into farms. BBC News. 30 July 2022 Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61919430
Rooftop Urban Farming in Singapore: The Iron Triangle of Farmers, Private Sector and Government-Linked Entities
ABSTRACT
Countries reliant on food imports like Singapore were recently affected by the Russo-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as both events increased the prices of staple foods. To mitigate this situation, Singapore’s rooftop farms focused on cultivating mass-consumed affordable Asian vegetables to substitute those that need to be imported. For Singapore, food supply becomes an existential threat if there are disruptions to the supply chain. Urban rooftop farming expands domestically grown options. Companies like Comcrop aims to provide vegetables in short supply within 30 days to the extent that there is enough to share (JTC, 2019). Land spaces in densely populated Singapore is scarce and the city-state has some of the most expensive property prices in the world. Therefore, the only real solution for the urban farmers is high-density farming with increased productivity and output. One model that has been formulated is supplying vegetables to the tenants of the same buildings where the rooftop farms are located. Comcrop serves as a model of a one-stop food supply unit that can be replicated in other Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) factories and form an entire local food supply chain (JTC, 2019). The rooftop farming stakeholders are banking on skills and technologies to enhance food security and reverse or arrest the imagery of farming as a declining sunset industry. They look towards Japan and their energy-conserving and automated food factories operated by skilled labour (JTC, 2019). Comcrop also taps into automation to relieve manpower shortages, including those related to pest control and lighting controls for higher yields of leafy green vegetables like pak choy, lettuce and mizuna (JTC, 2019).
Keywords: rooftop, Singapore, urban farming, automation, food security
INTRODUCTION
During the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in 2022, food security was highlighted in Singapore when several regional countries banned or restricted exports of key foods to the city-state (JTC, 2019). Even food-growing countries dependent on food imports restricted their food supplies for domestic use as the Russo-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic both hiked up the prices of staple foods (JTC, 2019). Therefore, Singapore’s rooftop farms are very focused on their targets, goals and objectives in mitigating this supply situation with an eye for future crises. The focus of the rooftop farms is on cultivating reasonably priced mass-consumed Asian vegetables (especially those imported from other countries) to mitigate near-future food security challenges and not waste resource on niched novelty items like square watermelons that the local housewives are unlikely to purchase at large supermarket chains like NTUC (JTC, 2019).
Viewing food supply as an existential issue, especially after the food supply disruptions of the pandemic era, urban rooftop farms is an attempt to increase the amount of food that is domestically grown. Comcrop Chairman/Founder Allan Lim painted a hypothetical scenario. He hypothesized a vegetable-producing country that Singapore relies on suddenly experiencing problems with their applied pesticides and their vegetables subsequently becomes un-exportable. Comcrop wants to be able to supply those vegetables in short-supply within 30 days, to the extent that, even though volume may be lower than usual, there is enough to go around to share (JTC, 2019). Such crisis thinking has led to the mushrooming of rooftop farms. At a minimum, 12 of these rooftop farms emerged in Singapore by 30 July 2022 after the state began renting out the plots in 2020 to increase domestic food output as Singapore’s 5.5 million population imports above 90% of its food needs (Liang, 2022).
Food security had always been on the minds of urban rooftop farming stakeholders. Comcrop started as a project for individuals to farm in the Bukit Panjang community farm in 2011, and then the participants realized the seriousness of food security given that Singapore depended heavily on imports (JTC, 2019). In response, Comcrop evolved from its inaugural open patch to a rooftop farm at *SCAPE, and then onto the current rooftop greenhouses at Woodlands (JTC, 2019). *SCAPE is Singapore's inaugural commercialized rooftop farm located in a skyscraper/mall in the bustling shopping district of Orchard Road and *SCAPE farms have since proliferated to Singapore’s northern region of Woodlands that is comparatively less densely-populated and proximate to southern Malaysia (Ee, 2015). Currently, Singapore’s domestic food supply is derived mostly from 238 state-subsidized licensed high-tech farms (2020 official figures) and, according to the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), some of these farms already turned profitable and can expand their production to jack up profits (Liang, 2022). SFA said in an interview with BBC News: "Food security is an existential issue for Singapore. As a globally connected small city-state with limited resources, Singapore is vulnerable to external shocks and supply disruptions. …This is why it is important that we continuously take steps to secure our essential resources" (Liang, 2022).
Some of Singapore’s internationally well-known companies are involved in the urban rooftop farming projects. Comcrop, the firm behind Singapore’s first rooftop farm at *SCAPE, has a vision where one “Imagine[s] a world where high-tech “plant factories” grow fresh produce for every neighborhood” and aims to construct Asia’s biggest commercial rooftop farm at 36,000 square feet, consisting of six greenhouses on the rooftops of JTC’s Woodlands developments (JTC, 2019). Woodlands is located at the northern section of Singapore. The rooftop urban farms in the public housing estates are typically surrounded by tower blocks in the urban areas and resemble nothing like traditional agricultural sites.
Urban farmer Eyleen Goh farms on the carpark decks and tall buildings in Singapore, scaling up to meet the demand of up to 400kg of vegetables daily from vegetable sellers nearby (Liang, 2022). She remarked: "Singapore is quite small but we have many car parks. It is pretty much the dream to have farms [here] to meet the needs of residents in the community" (Liang, 2022). Bigger players in rooftop farming like Comcrop also have the same intention to utilize more carpark spaces. Given there is a socio-political consensus for Singapore to cut down on car ownership (and hence more projected rooftop carpark spaces), this is a factor working in the rooftop farmers’ favour (JTC, 2019).
One of the Comcrop’s farms utilized the former 15 Woodlands Loop rooftop carpark to supply the same building’s food manufacturing company and its associated firms with vegetables that can be cooked or made into salads by them (JTC, 2019). Smaller-scale rooftop farmers like Goh's farm is approximately 1/3 the size of a football field with employees extracting, trimming, boxing choy sum (leafy green used in ethnic Chinese cuisines) and re-potting seedlings, and she commented that harvests occur daily: "We are harvesting every day. Depending on the vegetables we are growing, it can range from 100kg to 200kg to 400kg per day" (Liang, 2022). The farm required the expenditure of S$1 million (US$719,920) in a year, mostly spent on speedy harvesting equipment at the SG Veg Farms, salaries for 10 workers, rent of approximately S$90,000 annually for the land space, including a second car park space (Liang, 2022). Despite some government subsidies, Goh is waiting for the projects to become profitable (Liang, 2022).
CHALLENGES
The work of the pioneering batch of urban rooftop farmers like Eyleen Goh coincided with the era of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as Goh indicated:
"Our setting up period happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, so logistics were way more expensive and took a longer time…Moreover, this was the first rooftop car park tender awarded [by the government] so the process was very new to everyone". (Liang, 2022)
Therefore, there appeared to be a steep learning curve for this pioneering group of farmers. However, technology can smoothen out the curve. In generating employment and benefitting the community at large, the high-tech automated system enables special needs of individuals and the elderly (especially suitable for packaging and harvesting) to work in the farms and it becomes increasingly easier to do so without required high technical skills as the farms implement technologies on a greater scale (JTC, 2019).
Another challenge was that land spaces in densely populated Singapore is limited in size, leading to expensive land prices and some of the world's costliest property prices, and so some farmers had to relocate to a more affordable place due to the expensive rental rates of some carpark spaces (Liang, 2022). Therefore, the only real solution is high-density farming with optimized productivity and output. For example, operating in a factory-like environment with a standard routine for workers to follow to maximize productivity, it is projected that Comcrop can churn out 15 times more vegetables per square metre than conventional farming on soil (JTC, 2019).
MITIGATING COSTS
Nicholas Goh, another urban rooftop farmer, says he has managed to become profitable by charging individuals a monthly payment to harvest vegetables at his farm, a feature that is popular with families in the surrounding areas because "it is a community kind of approach, rather than a commercial approach" (Liang, 2022). Another interesting and innovative idea that has popped up is for rooftop farmers to supply vegetables to the tenants in the same building where the rooftop carpark is located. Provision of primary produce to an industrial building’s tenants is a one-stop food supplying model that can be reproduced in other Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) factories in the future to form an entire value chain of food supply (JTC, 2019). JTC is a renowned pioneer in constructing industrial parks in Singapore. It also builds industrial parks for overseas clients, highlighting potential for rooftop farming projects in those countries too.
Yet another urban farmer, Mark Lee, coped with the costs by relocating to an industrial building that comes with a "negligible" rent, explaining: "Vegetables are ultimately just vegetables. You can get it at the freshest and best quality but there is limitation to how much one would pay. We're not talking about truffles here" (Liang, 2022). In cutting costs, Comcrop CEO Peter Barber argue that they are farming on little-utilized land and rooftops and avoiding indoor farms with higher rentals due to the lower costs of these underutilized spaces in growing reasonably priced greens for local supermarkets (JTC, 2019).
Professor William Chen, faculty member of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Director of the NTU food science and technology program, advocated for more support for urban farms: "There are measures in place such as productivity grants from SFA, and regular farmers' markets to encourage consumers to buy more local produce. Perhaps helping local farmers to adopt simple technologies... may be considered" (Liang, 2022). In fact, the authorities have been supportive. The authorities were helpful in facilitating these projects with an accent on public safety so new regulations were in place for this pioneering industry which got a helping hand from renowned infrastructure/industrial builder JTC that advocated on behalf of the rooftop farmers and influenced the government departments positively (JTC, 2019). JTC’s voice carries weight as it is a well-known Government Linked Company (GLC) amongst the major Singapore economic stakeholders.
The rooftop farming stakeholders believe that skills and technologies can lead to food security and, with that, comes a reversal of thinking that farming is a declining industry, particularly with inspiration drawn from Japan where farming plants are energy-saving, highly automated and operated by skilled manpower in an energy-efficient manner (JTC, 2019). Likewise, Comcrop utilizes efficient automation tech to alleviate manpower needs, e.g. its Woodlands *SCAPE herb enclosed greenhouse farm utilizes pest control, light/shade control automated growing systems for higher daily yields of 40-50 kg of leafy vegetables like pak choy (also spelled as bak choy), lettuce and mizuna (JTC, 2019).
Comcrop farms implemented automation to cultivate pesticide-free green vegetables for local consumption and, other than cultivating Asian vegetables for food security, Comcrop is also dipping into agriculture research, but Comcrop Founder Allan Lim admitted: “But right now, we don’t have deep agriculture research capabilities in Singapore. This is something we need to work on” (JTC, 2019). To mitigate this and to enhance food security, Comcrop is setting their local seed bank for sustainable future supplies while allowing access to them for technologists who can extract the seeds’ essence and re-engineer them for better yields (JTC, 2019).
Sonia Akter, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, opined that high operating costs may be a main challenge for urban farmers: "Singapore is offering a lot of subsidies and financial support to entrepreneurs who are working in this space. The question is whether these farms will be able to operate and be commercially viable when the government support stops flowing. Giving up is not an option. The more challenging it is, the more rewarding it will be" (Liang, 2022). Perhaps, this passion of challenging conventional has driven more individuals to join the rooftop farming projects. For the founder/management of Comcrop, they are gratified at the groundswell of passionate response to their projects, including Google-qualified individuals, who, despite less competitive pay, are keen to join them, and their monthly free tours are constantly oversubscribed with more requests for volunteer work (receiving about 20 emails daily from all walks of life) (JTC, 2019).
CONCLUSION
By 2030, Singapore desires to have an output that covers 30% of the food it consumes domestically (i.e. more than triple the current output) (Liang, 2022). There is a caveat. Given that Singapore has not prioritized agricultural development for half a century, Comcrop Chairman/Founder Allan Lim opined there is a need for reliance on overseas help and studying their modern agriculture systems, e.g. Japanese pride in consuming their own high-quality (though pricier) Made-in-Japan farm produce that are placed in a particular section of their supermarkets (JTC, 2019). For complete replication of high-tech rooftop farming from ground-up, it would take a long time to reach productive fruition, so Comcrop is tapping into their Japanese suppliers’ seeds for growing premium vegetables to cultivate in Singapore, with the hope of picking out successful experiments to produce nutritious, pesticide-free and well-priced agricultural products (JTC, 2019).
For some of the rooftop farming stakeholders, there is another specific social cause for their enterprise besides food supply issues, they hope to provide employment as well. Comcrop founder Allan Lim also revealed the mission statement of his organization: “Our mission is to feed our community. We have three key principles: first, to use marginalized land to grow food; second, to employ technology that enable our communities, especially those who are marginalised in employment; and third, to do it as sustainably as possible” (JTC, 2019). The initial estimation by Comcrop was that their employees would mainly consist of retirees or individuals with spare time on their hands, but it turned out that the personnel managing the farms on a fulltime basis were mainly in their 30s or individuals applying for permanent jobs/internships in their 20s (JTC, 2019).
Ultimately, the projects also contribute to the overall economy. In the process of constructing these high-tech rooftop farms, Comcrop has spawned new industrial spin-offs such as offering specialized one-stop construction services to design/construct high-tech indigenous greenhouse, while collaborating with American, Dutch and Japanese firms to design new hydroponic technologies and workflows that suit the local conditions in Singapore (JTC, 2019). The eventual goal of Comcrop is to install rooftop farms in every neighborhood with local employment churning out the freshest and most affordable pesticide-free products to nearby supermarkets that can last longer than the marginally cheaper imported vegetables (JTC, 2019).
REFERENCES
Ee, Jamie. Growing Crops On Rooftops: Pushing Frontiers With Urban Farming.1 Jul 2015. Retrieved from https://www.psd.gov.sg/challenge/ideas/feature/growing-crops-on-rooftops...
JTC (Jurong Town Corporation). Rooftop Farms around Singapore: Comcrop’s vision to harvest new ideas. JTC website. 27 Feb 2019. Retrieved from https://www.jtc.gov.sg/about-jtc/news-and-stories/feature-stories/roofto...
Liang, Annabelle. How Singapore is turning multi-storey car parks into farms. BBC News. 30 July 2022 Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61919430