Food security and access to safe and nutritious food in Singapore is a challenge on several fronts as Singapore is a small city-state with limited resources, with only 1 per cent of land available for food production, and over 90 per cent of food is imported from an increasingly disrupted world. The Covid-19 pandemic has further amplified the gravity of safeguarding food security.
The city-state has been proactively planning for long-term food security through the Singapore Food Agency’s (SFA) strategy of “three food baskets” — diversifying food sources, growing locally and growing overseas.
Covid-19 should make Singapore look at globalisation and food security differently. Citiponics, the first commercial farm located on a multi-storey car park in a residential neighbourhood, harvested its first yield of vegetables in April 2019. In September 2020, another nine sites atop multi-storey car parks were awarded for urban farming. The successful bidders included proposals for hydroponic and vertical farming systems with a variety of innovative features, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain technology and automated climate control.
These sites have the potential to collectively produce around 1,600 tonnes of vegetables annually.
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