Singapore, the tiny Southeast Asian city-state, is an unlikely place for a farming revolution.
[no, no it's not. combine the world's highest average IQ with limited land area and things get real creative, real fast]
With tiered fish farms, vegetable plots atop office buildings and lab-grown shrimp, the island aims to beef up its own food production and rely less on imports to feed its 5.6 million people.And Gurkhas. Singapore's Gurkha Contingent have the best Police haberdashery in the world.
Singapore produces about 10% of its food but as climate change and population growth threatens global food supplies, it aims to raise that to 30% by 2030 under a plan known as ‘30-by-30’.
The challenge is space.
With only 1% of Singapore’s 724 sq km (280 sq miles) land area devoted to agriculture and production costs higher than the rest of Southeast Asia, the pressure is on new urban farmers to answer the government’s call to “grow more with less”.
“Whenever I talk about food security in Singapore, I tell folks don’t think land - think space. Because you can go upwards and sideways,” said Paul Teng, a professor specializing in agriculture at Nanyang Technological University.
Sustenir Agriculture is one of more than 30 vertical farms in Singapore, which has seen a doubling in so-called sky farms in three years....MUCH MORE
