Swimming against the tide

Hong Xinyi Today Online 12 Sep 13;

SINGAPORE — For Shannon Lim, 26, the unusual path to becoming a fish farmer started during National Service. One of his officers had an aquarium in his office, and Mr Lim was tasked to look after it.

“Being incredibly lazy, I tried to automate the biological and chemical processes in the tank by using plants and scavengers to keep the water clean,” he said.

His interest in aquatic ecosystems and water chemistry continued to grow, and eventually led to the invention of the current model that his company, OnHand Agrarian, uses today. “I guess you could say I took the hobby very seriously.”

Mr Lim’s fish farm uses an Integrated Multi-Trophic Recirculating Aquaculture System to raise and harvest seafood more efficiently in tanks, thereby improving waste management and nutrient recycling. Simply put, it involves creating ecosystems in tanks and using the waste product from one species as input for other co-cultured species.

Farming multiple species simultaneously in tanks on land rather than in enclosures in open water is a factor that sets Mr Lim’s methodology apart from the 100-odd fish farms here and most of those in South-east Asia. He believes the relatively primitive state of the industry domestically and regionally presents a huge opportunity.

“There is very little competition in Singapore, since the water conditions on the north side of the island are so poor that the farms there are constantly losing all their fish overnight,” he said. Meanwhile, the demand for seafood here is extremely high, and there are a number of aquaculture experts in Singapore who have been espousing similar polyculture concepts and “crying in the desert for the last 10 years for someone to commercialise their idea”, Mr Lim added.

His way of farming fish also creates a repository for hundreds of marine animals facing habitat destruction. “If any of these animals (are in danger of going) extinct in the region, we’ll be able to replace them. And since we can produce everything so cheaply, when we start doing this on a larger scale, it will no longer be viable for trawlers to destroy seagrass meadows and reefs for seafood,” he said.

In 2009, Mr Lim drafted a proposal for a “zero-waste polyculture farm” to apply for a million-dollar research grant from the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore. He emailed this proposal to aquaculture expert Emeritus Professor Lam Toong Jin of National University of Singapore for his endorsement and found out that the academic had an almost identical proposal for the same grant. They eventually submitted a joint application in 2011 but were not successful.

That same year, Mr Lim developed a pilot farm in the backyard of his house, where he built tanks with a total capacity of 20,000 litres. Fish cultivated there — numbering a dozen different species — were supplied to local restaurants such as Artichoke.

“Most of the initial investment was thanks to a friend, Patri Friedman of The Seasteading Institute, who connected me with several other angel investors from all over the world,” said Mr Lim. He is now developing a 40,000 sq ft plot of land in Lim Chu Kang into a larger farm that will eventually contain tanks with a total capacity of 5.4 million litres. “Once we’re fully funded, we’ll be producing 500 tonnes a year of seafood in our little soccer field.”

To go fully operational would require capital of S$850,000. To date, Mr Lim has raised about S$124,800 and hopes to confirm another offer of S$500,000 later this year.

Getting investors to commit has been challenging, said Mr Lim, adding that several Singaporean investors had changed their minds after initially promising to come on board. Part of the reason for this is the weak farming culture in Singapore, he said.

“Most large countries understand where their food comes from and how high-tech the agriculture industry really is,” noted Mr Lim. “Singaporeans tend to have the view that food magically finds its way across the Causeway and appears in supermarkets.”

Unsurprisingly, his biggest challenge is “convincing people that you can really produce seafood for 25 per cent of the local cost price and half the Indonesian price”.

“Most prospective investors refuse to believe that labour and land account for very little of our cost. It basically flies in the face of conventional wisdom that farming in Singapore can actually be cheaper than in Indonesia or Malaysia,” said Mr Lim.

But he is determined to realise his vision. “I love the sea. Some of my earliest memories are of fishing at Changi with my dad and grandfather. Now that I have a 16-month-old daughter, I want her to be able to see all the amazing things I’ve done and share those experiences,” he said.