Last month, Malaysia announced a bird export ban in an effort to reduce the costs of birds sold in the country. Singaporeans were rightly volatile: Malaysian birds are one of the 3 most sensitive bird resources imported into Singapore, the other two are birds imported from the United States and Brazil. .
While many of us who grew up in this small city-state have heard, the current narrative is that Singapore depends on foreign industry to survive, yet few of us have noticed what the challenge looks like up close; and this recent resolution has been a rude awakening for many.
Not everyone, however, was left off guard. The Singapore government has been aware of the need to diversify our food supply, and local production is part of that plan.
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has its own targets under Singapore’s Green Plan 2030, which is its “30 to 30” edition. This means that 30% of our food will be produced by 2030. So where is this plan?
Many of us might be surprised to learn that Singapore actually has farmers, and they are not kampung farmers that many of us may believe when we think of the agricultural industry in Southeast Asia.
In contrast, Singapore’s agri-food and agricultural generation industry is necessarily Singaporean, integrating generation into its processes for better results.
The clearest example of this is urban agriculture. Unlike the use of large tracts of open land for crops, buildings are the key location for agriculture. Construction roofs, or even custom-made high-tech buildings, can be used to produce food and alleviate Singapore’s dependence on foreign imports.
The SFA and the Housing Development Board (HDB) submitted a call for tenders in May 2020 for farms on the roofs of social housing parks.
On the one hand, Citiponics consists of a 1,800-square-meter farm over a multi-story parking lot in Ang Mo Kio, producing between 3 and 4 pesticide-free vegetables per month.
Founded in 2016, Citiponics aims to grow produce through its waste-free farming process. It has a generation of exclusive vertical farming called Aqua-Organic System (AOS): this is a solid-based soilless crop, which is another of classic farming and hydroponic farming system.
He created in particular for agriculture close to families and neighborhoods.
Some of the benefits come from it being a waste-free agricultural formula where the component is recyclable and reusable, compared to classic farming where it can only generate waste from land and water use.
All citiponic agricultural products are segmented into home deliveries, to nearby citizens and NTUC FairPrice outlets.
Citiponics is rarely the only startup that interacts with rooftop urban agriculture. Nicholas Goh and his team at Nature’s International Commodity are doing something similar to Tampines. He is one of the few to win the tender in May 2020 to create rooftop farms. of low rental car parks.
The tampines park farm grows vegetables such as xiao bai cai, kailan and bayam to comply with the consumption behavior of the inhabitants.
According to Nicholas, urban farming strategies differ from classical agriculture. His company uses soil generation (environmentally friendly biological fertilizers) to grow vegetables. Nicholas also uses sensors to identify potential problems in crops, which he says saves him time and money.
“I am in a strategic agricultural solution, which is to be small, well controlled and strategically located. Urban agriculture defines this as a farm because it supplies and complements the wishes of the inhabitants,” he said.
The concept of urban agriculture can be taken even further. What if from having urban agriculture only on the roofs, entire buildings are made to measure to satisfy the desires of urban agriculture?
One company that does this is Archisen: it’s an agrotechnology startup in Singapore that focuses on generating vegetables for local consumption.
According to co-founders Sven Yeo and Vincent Wei, “Food security is an extension of Singapore’s five pillars of advocacy, and innovation and generation can make local products reasonable in the long run. “
Urban agriculture is for Singapore because of food security. We have noticed the effects of COVID-19 on the chain of origin with empty supermarket shelves and, more recently, with origin problems similar to those of Malaysian poultry. This obviously demonstrates the vulnerability of the chain of origin to disruption, and the characteristics for the resilience of construction without urban agriculture in Singapore are limited.
In an effort to develop local production, Archisen uses a high-tech urban farm capable of mimicking the environment in which plants grow naturally, and has already developed its own urban farming formula known as Cropdom.
They also plan to integrate automation into their urban farm and expand it with more urban farms.
Obviously, start-ups like those start with one goal in mind: to help Singapore achieve some degree of self-sufficiency in food security, at least for vegetables.
But our local nutritional desires are limited to green vegetables. What about meat and fish?
Singapore consumes 120,000 tonnes of seafood a year, or about 16 kg of consistent seafood. Worse, many of the species we consume are not sustainable due to overfishing. So where to locate a select source of fish?
For Singapore, aquaculture can play a role. The procedure consists of keeping and raising fish, before supplying them to the local market for consumption.
As in urban agriculture, generation plays a key role here. Atlas Aquaculture, a new onshore aquaculture company in Singapore, uses generation so that the seafood consumed by Singaporeans can be produced locally.
Located in Sungei Tengah, they have a wide variety of experts to make sure their fish is of the highest quality.
The formula used through Atlas allows them to recycle and reuse more than 95% of their water, which is a product of limited origin in Singapore.
However, employing the generation is not easy.
Maintaining healthy water quality requires a great deal of clinical wisdom and can be intimidating for the regular operator. Our first edition of recirculation aquaculture systems used existing parts from industries, only to learn that many innovations were needed. .
Since then, we have manufactured new traditional filtration parts for our systems and will soon incorporate artificial intelligence and device learning. With true automation monitored and controlled through artificial intelligence, we can control human error and increase efficiency.
Their tenacity and ingenuity also mean that aquaculture can not only produce fish, but also fish and similar marine products. Atlas has already controlled the production of mussels and oysters that clean the water, as well as plants such as algae and sea grapes. .
“We are heading towards Singapore’s target of 30% by 2030, but it is a task. It will take a lot of investment and cooperation to get closer to that goal,” he adds.
Of course, urban agriculture and aquaculture have their own problems. Given their maximum technological intensity, special attention should be paid to the further progression of these systems.
This is a place where startups would appreciate the support, but what does the investment landscape look like for those industries?
An investor spouse at a venture capital firm that Vulcan Post spoke to frankly said the outlook wasn’t very positive: The looming recession is expected to hit all sectors hard, and the agricultural technology sector is no different.
“Sectors are still small, and venture capitalists lately have a very strong appetite for agribusiness and agribusiness startups,” he continued.
But those venture capital firms have an explanation for why to hesitate. On the one hand, the capital-intensive nature of those startups can be an impediment for some investors.
Another challenge is the viability of agrotechnology products. High production costs translate into higher costs for consumers when, despite everything, those products hit the shelves, and venture capital firms see this as a major hurdle for startups to overcome.
Asian consumers are basically concerned about the price rather than the origin of the product. Why should I pay more if you give me the same nutritional price as traditional options?Prices may be reduced, but we don’t see it.
Of course, this does not mean that the agrotechnology and agri-food sectors cannot expect anything in raising capital. The investor spouse discussed that there are several adjustments that venture capitalists would like to see in those startups.
First, he hopes that those startups will take a good look at their business methods to see if they remain ideal. Another point is for those startups to reduce operating costs to reduce money consumption.
“These adjustments would actually cause venture capitalists to reassess their assumptions about the industry and most likely invest in those startups more favorably. “
As Singapore moves towards better food self-sufficiency, many startups seem to be interested in this trend. But as you can see, it’s not easy for them.
High-tech prices seem to be an impediment to them to varying degrees; this makes scaling complicated and provides a “trap 22” when funded. Investors are reluctant to invest because of the amount of capital needed to succeed, but without funding, the expansion is complicated.
Although there is hope. These startups also report that sales have been encouraging and that the costs of those products are slowly aligning with customer expectations; and one day we may see a case where those Singaporean startups face supply chain disruptions.
Featured image credit: Archisen
Vulcan Post aims to be the wisdom hub of Singapore and Malaysia.
© 2021 GRVTY Media Pte. Ltda. (UEN 201431998C. )
Vulcan Post aims to be the wisdom hub of Singapore and Malaysia.
© 2021 GRVTY Media Pte. Ltda. (UEN 201431998C. )