Singapore is a highly urbanised city-state constrained within a small island. Agricultural lands account for less than 1 percent of its total land area, and therefore 90 percent of food consumed by Singaporeans is imported.

This appears as a pressing issue, considering that global food demand is expected to increase by 70 percent by 2050, whilst climate change threatens worldwide agricultural production.

Ensuring its population is well nourished by a food production model that respects the environment and promotes social cohesion is a key challenge for the city of Singapore.

In 2012, an organisation named Edible Garden City (EGC) started a ground-up movement to increase Singapore’s resilience and people’s connection to food by introducing urban farming for residential, educational and recreational purposes. They started with building small-scale gardens, and in 2017, expanded to Citizen Farm, a sustainable and socially driven community farm which commercialises its products and provides training and educational content.

The farm employs a combination of hydroponics, an indoor substrate-based system, and outdoor soil-based farming, and it is exploring using organic waste to grow mushrooms. The combination of these different techniques makes it possible to use considerably fewer resources than traditional farming.

Besides building gardens, EGC also provides urban garden consultancy, through which the organisation builds and grows gardens on city buildings for property developers and restaurants, schools, malls, offices and private residences.

They also provide trainings, educational workshops, and farm tours to schools, corporations and other communities interested in strengthening their internal sustainability.

In addition, the organisation have also collaborated with civil society organisations such as the Autism Resource Centre, Employment for People with Intellectual Disabilities, and the Singapore Prison Service to teach farming skills to people with autism, mental disabilities, and to inmates.

In growing their organsation, EGC has also engaged in a public-private partnership with the Urban Farming Taskforce, formed by Singapore's Ministry of National Development, to overcome challenges in introducing urban farming in Singapore, such as lack of space for farming and complex land use regulations.

The organisation might also receive some investment from the Government of Singapore, following the announcement of a S$30 million investment (around €20 million) to support the "30 by 30" project, which aims at bringing local food production up to 30% (from the current 10%) by 2030.

EGC has built more than 200 edible gardens, which vary across a range of sizes. For example, the Open Farm Community restaurant has transformed a former golf course into a 10,000-square-foot permaculture community garden that grows 50 varieties of vegetables and herbs, tropical fruit trees, and chickens used in the restaurant’s high-quality, organic dishes.

The organisation has also helped build a sensory garden for hearing-impaired children and a 150-square-foot garden for the Pathlight school for autism. It also helps the schools design their farming curriculum and teach it to students.

Citizen Farm itself grows up to 20 varieties of leafy salad greens such as lettuce, kale and spinach; herbs and microgreens such as basil, mint, lemongrass and coriander; and edible flowers and mushrooms. At full capacity, it can produce a total of 150 kg of leafy greens and 150 kg of mushrooms a month. 

The grounds of Citizen Farm are also home to Singapore’s first insect farm, run separately by Insectta. Insectta currently uses food waste from the food manufacturing process to feed black soldier fly (BSF) larvae. The larvae are sold as a livestock feed to local fish farms and pet owners. This method recycles food waste – a negative-value product – into useful positive-value products that give back to the economy.

It was reported that EGC has recorded a whopping S$1.4 million (around €956,000) in revenue in 2018, which one year later skyrocketed to S$1.7 million (around €1.1 million).

Photo by Joshua Lanzarini on Unsplash