Singapore imports about 90 percent of its food—one of the highest percentages of any country in the world. Over the years, the Singapore government has worked hard to diversify its food import sources—in 2017 Singapore imported food from 170 countries worldwide—but the island-state has witnessed significant price spikes following food shortfalls in recent years, either due to poor harvests or domestic policy changes that halted food exports.
A recent United Nations study, revealing how humanity’s increasing demand for land and sea resources, coupled with climate change and sea-level rise, pollution and invasive species, demonstrated that food security is a worldwide threat. As a small island-state highly dependent on trade, Singapore is certainly not immune from this risk.
According to Darren Tan, who heads the education and community outreach efforts at ComCrop, Singapore’s first and only AVA-licensed rooftop farm, Urban Farming is part of the answer.
"The biggest issue we need to overcome is consumer mindsets associated with food production. As a highly connected society with the highest smartphone penetration rate globally, Singaporeans are flooded on social media with imported ideas of organic standards and “pretty produce,” which make for good stories on Instagram, but may not be ideal in a land-scarce city like Singapore", he says.