Plan in place to help local farms produce more, stay financially viable: SFA chief
Shabana Begum Straits Times Jun 05, 2025, 08:35 PM
SINGAPORE - High-tech agriculture is a nascent sector globally, and as Singapore ventures into this area, work is under way to address some of the challenges faced by local farms, said Mr Damian Chan, chief executive of the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), on May 29.
In his first interview since he took on the role as head of SFA in May 2024, Mr Chan said that he was aware of the pains faced by the sector, which has seen a spate of closures and reduced production levels for vegetables and seafood.
He also outlined an overarching strategy to help boost local production, which includes opening up new farm spaces, efforts to ensure a healthy supply of baby fish for farms to grow, and ensuring that every harvest is consistently sold to shore up farms’ revenue.
He was speaking to local media ahead of the release of the 2024 Singapore Food Statistics report on June 5, which found that the local production of vegetables and seafood had dipped, although egg farms continued to do well.
Singapore’s main strategy to safeguard food security is to diversify its food sources by importing from 187 countries and regions. But local production, which now makes up less than 10 per cent of the country’s total food consumption, is also considered a critical buffer to supply shocks.
There had initially been efforts to increase local production to 30 per cent of demand by 2030, but recent headwinds – such as reduced investor interest and higher electricity prices – have prompted a review of this goal.
Said Mr Chan, 52: “High productivity farming is still a nascent sector in Singapore and globally as well. So it needs more time to develop, mature and for our farms to evolve their business models to make it more economically viable for them.”
He added: “My focus then is on having more farms which are financially sustainable and productive. Priority is problem-solving, helping the farms, which are committed and capable.”
Mr Chan said that in general, the broad plan is to focus not on the number of farms in Singapore, but on ensuring that farms can be productive and financially viable.
The Government is helping farms to achieve this by, for example, extending funding support to help them adopt technologies such as advanced, automated farming equipment and infrastructure.
This is done through the $60 million Agri-food Cluster Transformation Fund, which had its scope recently expanded to cover marketing expenses and pre- and post-harvest facilities.
The Government will also open up more land and sea spaces for farms that can be financially viable, he said.
For example, SFA will soon be releasing new land tenders in Sungei Tengah and Lim Chu Kang that can be used for either aquaculture or vegetable farming, he added.
The agency also plans to open up more aquaculture spaces in the East Johor Strait from 2026, with a target of raising the production of seafood there to up to 6,700 tonnes annually – almost twice the 3,500 tonnes produced in Singapore in 2024.
Farm land currently makes up only about 1 per cent of the country’s land area.
At a broader level, plans for a 390ha high-tech agri-food hub in Lim Chu Kang were announced in 2020. It was reported in late 2024 that this Lim Chu Kang masterplan, as well as construction work for the neighbouring Agri-Food Innovation Park, was delayed.
Asked for updates on this, Mr Chan would only say this is a priority area for SFA, and it is looking into how best to implement the project.
Another pain point the Government has sought to address is the high rate of fish mortalities in local farms, caused by low-quality baby fish – or fingerlings – sourced from overseas.
Fingerlings from abroad may carry diseases and be of inconsistent quality, worsened by their long journey to Singapore. Mortalities here can reach 80 per cent due to the inconsistent quality of eggs and fingerlings.
To prevent such losses, several aquaculture players have long called for a local supply of young fish that are fast-growing and genetically superior.
In late 2024, SFA announced the national broodstock centres for Asian seabass and marine tilapia, where the young fishes will be bred. Certified hatcheries will then rear the newly hatched fish and sell the fingerlings to farms.
“Increasing their grow-out rate and reducing mortality will make significant differences to the competitiveness of our aquaculture farms,” said Mr Chan.
Finally, for farms to remain financially viable, they must also have buyers ready to purchase their produce. This is because local farms are competing against cheaper imports.
“It is definitely not as easy as ‘just grow and you can sell’,” said Mr Chan.
He advised farms to talk to large customers, such as supermarkets, restaurant chains and food manufacturers, to negotiate long-term partnerships.
He also stressed the need for farms to come together and sell their produce under a common brand to attract larger retailers. This will then help the farms achieve economies of scale and widen their market share.
“Many of the large (customers) I talked to – they tell SFA that most farms outside of the egg farms are not large enough to provide necessary quantities to them, and they cannot be talking to a multitude of small farms,” Mr Chan noted.
In one initiative, the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation started two brands to sell leafy greens and tilapia from a bloc of local farms. Chye sim, lettuce and xiao bai cai, for example, were selling at $1.78 for 200g.
As at February 2025, sales in FairPrice had increased about fivefold for xiao bai cai and twofold for tilapia since the start of the initiative in May 2024.
Ways to strengthen the four pillars – providing farms with funding support, ensuring sales of local produce, and increasing farming spaces and quality of baby fish – will be looked into during the review of the 30-by-30 goal, added Mr Chan.
He took over SFA after a decades-long career at the Economic Development Board (EDB). Before leaving EDB, he was its executive vice-president overseeing planning and policy in several areas including agri-food and environmental sustainability.
Asked how his years at EDB shaped his perception of the local farming sector, Mr Chan said the experience gave him a “problem-solving mindset” to uncover challenges faced by a sector and develop solutions for them.
At EDB, Mr Chan said he often took an industry-wide view of a sector. But at SFA, he often has to work with individual farms.
Mr Chan said: “EDB looks at industries that sell to the region, or globally. The agri-food sector is one which, at least today, is still primarily selling to the domestic Singapore market. And, of course, it’s one that is fragmented. You have many small players.
Local production of veggies, seafood fell in 2024, but egg yields grew: Report
Overall, Singapore’s local food production in 2024 made up less than 10 per cent of total demand.
Shabana Begum Straits Times Jun 05, 2025, 09:50 PM
SINGAPORE - Local production of vegetables and seafood declined further in 2024, hindering the Republic’s initial target of producing 30 per cent of its nutritional needs by 2030.
The 2024 figures come after a series of disruptions to the local farming sector, with some high-profile players closing down, and others delaying plans or scaling back production over the past couple of years.
Overall, local food production in 2024 made up less than 10 per cent of total demand, with vegetable farming and aquaculture production declining since 2021.
In 2024, 3 per cent of vegetables consumed were grown locally, down from 3.2 per cent in 2023. Local seafood production dropped from 7.3 per cent in 2023 to 6.1 per cent in 2024, according to the 2024 Singapore Food Statistics report released on June 5.
The same year, there were 153 farms on land – most of which grow vegetables – down from 156 the year before. The 72 sea-based farms were also down from 98 the previous year.
The country’s three egg farms, however, bucked the trend. These high-tech facilities produced 34.4 per cent of all eggs consumed in 2024, up from 31.9 per cent.
Farming sector shake-up
Singapore has three main pillars under its food security strategy.
The main one is diversifying food sources by importing from 187 countries and regions, followed by stockpiling rice in the event of emergencies.
But local production is still considered critical for the country’s food security, as it ensures the Republic has access to key food types, such as seafood, eggs and vegetables, even during supply chain disruptions.
Since 2019, Singapore has had an aspirational target to locally produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs by 2030, but it was revealed in Parliament in March that the 30-by-30 target is being reviewed.
In the report, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said the lower production for seafood was “partly due to the restructuring of a few fish farms in Singapore”.
The Straits Times had previously reported that a quarter of sea-based farms exited in 2024 because of the higher costs of maintaining the farms, the need to pay for the use of sea spaces under a recent scheme, and changing environmental conditions that could impact yield, among other reasons.
Farmers also chose to retire, with some taking up a financial support package of up to $100,000 from SFA to wind up operations. ST had asked how many farms have taken up this package, but SFA did not reveal the figures.
On the drop in local production of vegetables and fish, SFA chief executive Damian Chan said on May 29 in his first interview with the media since taking on his new role in May 2024: “We’ve seen how factors like higher operating costs, especially energy costs, the weaker investment climate in high-tech farming and also the challenges which the farms face in securing (sales) have impacted them.
“While energy cost has lowered a bit since the past few years, it’s still relatively more expensive than in other countries.”
And since local produce typically costs more than imported ones, shoppers tend to opt for the more affordable leafy greens and fish, affecting demand.
As for eggs, the report said that farm upgrades and improved operations contributed to the growth of egg farms.
Review of local production target
On the review of the 30-by-30 target, Mr Chan said the goal was mooted at a time before the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war, which disrupted supply chains and led to an energy crisis.
“There are some things which we need to work with individually with the farms to help them. There are some things that probably need to be done more at a policy level. There are some things that need to be done at the infrastructure level and so on,” he said when asked about the progress of the review.
Mr Chan also stressed that it is productivity, not the number of farms, that is critical for Singapore’s local production to contribute to food security.
“One thing I want to stress, we don’t necessarily need more farms. But what we need is more farms that have sufficient scale to be productive, competitive and financially sustainable,” he said.
There are promising signs of this, noted the report, which said that some farms, including high-tech ones, have been yielding more produce and fish while using less space.
Vegetable farms’ annual productivity increased from 227.2 tonnes of greens per hectare in 2023 to 231.4 tonnes in 2024.
The report also hinted at some optimism that the country will pick up pace in its vegetables and seafood production, stating that “2025 and 2026 will see the set-up and ramp-up of a few large-scale indoor vertical farms that are climate-resilient, productive and competitive”.
The Straits Times understands that one of them is Artisan Green, which currently runs a small-scale vegetable-growing indoor facility in Kallang.
Its chief executive, Mr Ray Poh, told ST that the launch of its new 2ha site in Sungei Tengah, initially scheduled for 2025, has been pushed to the third quarter of 2026 due to the site’s design changes.
The site – around the size of three football fields – will have an indoor production area of 5,500 sq m and an outdoor greenhouse of 0.65ha, with a visitor centre and restaurant.
SFA’s Mr Chan said some of the upcoming farms are expansions of existing firms, and at least one of them will be “quite a large-scale facility”, without providing further details.
For seafood, SFA has said it plans to open up more aquaculture spaces in the East Johor Strait from 2026, with a target of raising local production of seafood there to up to 6,700 tonnes annually. This is nearly double the amount of seafood Singapore produced in 2024, which was 3,500 tonnes.
For farms to be profitable and sustainable, the Singapore Institute of Technology’s Associate Professor Matthew Tan said aquaculture insurance schemes, grants for climate adaptation and green financing options can help farms better weather shocks and attract investment.
“Sustainable financing models and realistic revenue projections are essential – don’t over-leverage,” added Prof Tan, who has over 20 years of experience in the agri-tech sector.
The report also touched on food safety, another area under the agency’s ambit.
It said cases of food poisoning increased in 2024, with close to 23 cases of foodborne illness for every 100,000 people, up from 21.9 cases in 2023.
More than half of the cases in 2024 involved catered food, the report said.
One food safety incident is still under investigation and was not counted in the report, SFA said.
There were several high-profile food poisoning outbreaks in 2024, including an incident in July at the ByteDance office, which affected 169 people.
That same month, over 160 personnel at the Civil Defence Academy reported sick in a separate incident.
SFA then stepped up checks at catering establishments and met associations in the food sector to share key insights from the outbreaks.
“So that’s where really understanding the problems of the farm at the industry level, and also at the farm-specific level, is critical. I’d like to assure them that we will look and continue to... provide them with more targeted support along the value chain.”
Why we should not give up on local farms despite setbacks faced by the sector
Shabana Begum Straits Times Jun 07, 2025, 09:56 PM
SINGAPORE – In February 2019, there was much fanfare when fish farm Barramundi Group launched its expanded nursery off Pulau Semakau.
The Republic was nurturing fertile ground (and waters) to propel local farming to greater heights, fuelled by a new target to produce 30 per cent of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030. More farms sprouted up, and the agri-tech sector was raring to go.
The buoyant appetite for high-tech farming, however, was not to last – and the local farming sector has since been gripped by closures and falling output.
Yet, Singapore cannot give up on trying to build up its local farming sector, as having a local buffer against supply shocks is non-negotiable.
This is especially so with climate change, geopolitical conflicts and animal disease outbreaks posing a constant threat to imported food supply – Singapore’s key strategy to safeguarding its food security.
Even though Singapore is importing food from 187 countries and regions, it is not prudent to rely on just external sources when droughts and extreme weather can upend the world’s food bowls as climate impacts worsen.
On June 5, the national food statistics showed a drop in the output of vegetables and seafood from local farms. In 2024, 3 per cent of vegetables consumed were grown locally, down from 3.2 per cent in 2023. Local seafood production fell from 7.3 per cent in 2023 to 6.1 per cent in 2024.
The country’s three egg farms, however, bucked the trend. These high-tech facilities produced 34.4 per cent of all eggs consumed in 2024, up from 31.9 per cent in 2023. This was due to the farms’ upgrades and operational efficiencies.
At the same time, about 50 per cent of bean sprouts consumed come from local farms, Singapore Food Agency (SFA) chief executive Damian Chan told the local media on May 29.
So, these successes give some hope that leafy greens and fish can turn the tide with time and effort.
In recent years, farms here have had to grapple with multiple setbacks – including animal disease outbreaks, soaring electricity prices and an investment winter.
Barramundi Group, for example, was hit by a fish virus outbreak in 2023 that grounded its commercial operations. It was also revealed that the group was making plans to exit Singapore.
Singapore, which imports more than 90 per cent of its food, has already had a taste of such disruptions in imported food supply.
In early 2023, farms in Malaysia were inundated by floods, and the lower vegetable yields affected Singapore. The prices of veggies were reported to have risen in several wet markets.
In 2022, Malaysia imposed a chicken export ban for a few months as it was struggling to meet its own poultry needs amid a drop in production and soaring feed costs.
Back then, more than a third of Singapore’s chicken supply came from Malaysia. This resulted in higher chicken prices, and a number of small shops and hawkers decided to pause business as they were reliant on Malaysian poultry.
Mr Chan has outlined an overarching strategy to address farms’ pain points – from initiatives to ensure consistent sales to supplying a local pipeline of healthy baby fish.
This overarching plan is a step in the right direction, said experts, but they also stressed that the agri-food sector cannot skip getting the basic science of aquaculture and growing crops right.
High-tech farming is a nascent sector in Singapore and globally, and technologies used to increase productivity are not yet at a plug-and-play stage.
Local vegetable producer Artisan Green’s CEO Ray Poh said he approached this business cautiously to understand the levers that make farming work in the Singapore context.
“Some farms have approached (high-tech farming) from the engineering angle, but ultimately, without the foundational plant science knowledge, the systems are not optimised for plant health and growth,” he said.
Singapore has also made strides in ensuring that fish farming in the Strait of Johor north of the country, where dissolved oxygen levels are low and pathogen levels are high, can be more productive, by elevating farming practices in late 2024.
Under the plan, farmers are urged to use proper pellets instead of expired bread to feed fish, and must track nutrient levels in the water.
Professor Dean Jerry, director of the Tropical Futures Institute at James Cook University, Singapore, said: “Many farms do not purchase high-quality fish feeds matched to the requirements of the species farmed, so the fish are not growing at their best performance and there is a lot of wastage.”
He added: “Singapore waters are a hotbed of pathogens that, if not detected early, managed and eliminated from systems, can rapidly cause massive mortalities.”
It is clear that efforts are being made to help Singapore’s farms cope. But there are some pain points faced by local farms that recent initiatives do not address.
Agri-food consultant Lee Eng Keat suggested investing in infrastructure to reduce the distribution cost of produce, which is the expense incurred in getting fresh produce from the farm to consumers.
“Currently, much of this is undertaken through distributors and supermarkets. They charge a relatively high margin to take on this risk. Perhaps the Government can consider alternative models to better support farmers with the distribution cost,” he said.
Lack of adequate farming infrastructure is another challenge that existing plans do not flesh out.
Barramundi Group had cited the lack of infrastructure as a reason why it planned to exit the Singapore market. Transporting fish feed and equipment was challenging with no dedicated jetty for fish farmers to use.
But SFA said in 2024 that it is looking to improve fish farming infrastructure in the southern waters.
Similar infrastructure problems exist in the Strait of Johor, where almost all of Singapore’s 72 at-sea farms are found. For one thing, most farms have to rely on diesel as they have no means of tapping electricity from the grid.
Several farms and experts have also called for shared post-harvest facilities.
Mr Poh said: “Stronger support through longer conditional land tenures, customised grants based on each farm’s performance and potential, and even favourable infrastructure rates through shared facilities can be considered.”
But helping farmers boost productivity to increase the supply of local produce is just one part of the picture.
On growing demand, the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation has brokered long-term contracts between a bloc of farmers and retailers, to ensure the continuous sale of marine tilapia and leafy greens.
But this can be scaled up with contracts with schools and the military, suggested Associate Professor Matthew Tan from the Singapore Institute of Technology.
Prof Tan – who chairs the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Policy Partnership on Food Security for sustainable development in the agriculture and fishery sectors – also urged farms to align with retail partners, insurers and logistics players early to secure market access and reduce operational risks.
“A structured approach that combines innovation, prudent business management and environmental stewardship will be essential to avoid repeating such costly exits,” he said.