Farm in the city

Lea Wee The Sunday Times AsiaOne 10 Feb 15;

A slew of edible gardens is burnishing Singapore's reputation as a garden city.

Over the last two to three years, more than 80 plots with fruits, herbs and vegetables have sprung up not only in private and public housing estates, but also in eateries, malls, schools and offices as urban farming takes off here.

Just last month, the Singapore Management University launched such a garden, about the size of a basketball court, outside the School of Accountancy and Law building along Queen Street.

Companies that help build and maintain these urban farms, which typically range from a few hundred to a few thousand sq ft, report a growing interest.

For instance, Edible Garden City, UGrowGardens and Plantvisionz say they had only a handful of projects when they started a few years ago.
Last year, each handled more than 10 projects.

A Facebook page called Grow Your Own Food In Singapore, set up by environmentalist Bhavani Prakash, 44, has garnered more than 1,200 likes since it was started in 2013.

The National Parks Board's Community In Bloom programme, a nationwide gardening programme which started in 2005, has also seen the creation of more than 700 gardens all over the island.

People want to grow their own food for various reasons, says former aerospace engineer James Lam, 55, who founded UGrowGardens in 2013.

He says: "Chefs and homeowners want fresh produce for their kitchens. Companies use the gardens to help their staff relieve stress.

"Schools use them as a tool to teach teamwork or as part of community service, when they get their students to take the harvests to the poor.

"It is also a good way to promote community bonding and for neighbours to get to know one another."

Some property developers are also beginning to see the value of turning their ornamental rooftop space into a productive food garden, says Mr Bjorn Low, 35, who founded Edible Garden City with former landscape designer Robert Pearce, 38, in 2012.

He says: "Instead of paying a landscape firm to maintain an ornamental garden, they pay us to maintain a food garden and in the process, they can also use the space to conduct value-added events on food growing for their tenants."

The social enterprise is in negotiations with the management of Bugis Village to start a commercial farm at a 10,000 sq ft space on the rooftop of its multi-storey carpark.

The farm will supply fresh vegetables and herbs to eateries nearby.

If successful, it will not be the only commercial urban farm in town.

Singapore's first commercial urban rooftop farm was set up by social enterprise Comcrop at youth hub *Scape in Orchard Link last April.

The 6,000 sq ft farm now churns out 10kg each of basil and mint every day that it supplies to about 30 restaurants and hotels nearby.

Meanwhile, a 5,800 sq ft rooftop farm called G.R.E.E.N.S by two entrepreneurs started running last August at Bugis Cube mall.

Observers trace the growing popularity of urban farms here to several factors, including a growing awareness of how the heavy use of pesticides and fertilisers can harm health and the environment.

Says Ms Prakash, who grows vegetables, fruits and herbs on the balcony of her condominium unit: "When you grow your own food, you are more careful about what you put into the soil because you know you are going to eat it."

Other factors include the worldwide food security crisis in 2007, which caused disruptions in the supply of rice and other food products here, as well as recent food contamination scares, says Professor Paul Teng, a food security expert from the National Institute of Education.

"They made Singaporeans realise that some level of self-sufficiency was important," he says.

Information on how to grow your own food is also more easily available these days.

HortPark in the Alexandra Road area holds guided tours to its vegetable garden. The public can also sign up for related talks and demonstrations at its Gardeners' Day Out event, held once every two months.

Edible Garden City has been running free sessions on food growing too. On Feb 21, it will pilot a formal course on urban farming for the public over six weekends at a shophouse in Rowell Road.

Each session, to be held over four hours on Saturday and Sunday, is tentatively priced at $40.

By the end of the year, it will also pilot an urban food trail linking Comcrop and at least four herb gardens in town.

A first of its kind, the project allows participants to visit the gardens and sample their produce in the restaurants.

As interest grows, farming input and equipment are also becoming more easily available.

For example, Prof Teng says there are companies that sell simple small vertical vegetable boxes, complete with soil and seedlings, at relatively low prices.

These can fit easily on apartment balconies.

And plant nurseries, which traditionally sell mainly ornamental plants, now also sell various kinds of vegetables in pots. The cost of growing one's own edible garden varies.

For instance, Mr Lam from UGrow- Gardens says its vertical growing systems, which costs about $120 each, can grow up to about 200 vegetables such as kailan, bakchoy and chye sim within a 11/2 sq ft space. The vegetables can be harvested after four weeks.

Mr Low from Edible Garden City says the cost of having an edible plot starts from as low as $10 for three to four styrofoam boxes of vegetables, such as chye sim or xiao bai cai, including soil and seeds.

The amount can go up to $20,000 and beyond for a garden of at least 4,000 sq ft. Such a plot would be big enough for at least 10 fruiting shrubs, 100 pots of different herbs and rows of vegetables. Herbs can be harvested anytime, while vegetables typically take about a month.

Prof Teng notes that the growing popularity of urban farms here is part of a worldwide trend that hopes to tap urban spaces to meet some of the world's food needs.

A study last year warned that the world would face a dire food shortage by 2050, as there may not be enough resources to sustain the projected population of 9 billion people.

Such farms are now common in big cities such as Boston and Toronto while in Asia, there are significant movements in Seoul and Shanghai.

The Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that urban or peri-urban agriculture (farms that are found in cities and its immediate surroundings) now supplies 20 per cent of the world's food needs.

In some cities such as Hanoi in Vietnam, it is estimated that up to 80 per cent of the vegetables consumed during the summer months are from the peri-urban areas.

But while growing your own food at home and in the community is getting easier, those who want to turn it into a viable business still face hurdles.

Prof Teng says land and labour costs in cities are high, and these often drive up the cost of vegetables produced by urban farms.

More than 90 per cent of Singapore food is imported, but the Government has expressed a wish to hit certain sufficiency targets for fish, eggs and vegetables through commercial farms. The targets are constantly being reviewed.

This, says Prof Teng, will encourage people to give running commercial farms a shot.

In 2013, Singapore produced about 10,300 tonnes of leafy vegetables, which made up about 12 per cent of its total consumption. Government support is vital to the survival of commercial urban farms, says Prof Teng.

"The Government, as a land owner, may want to consider extending the land lease for these farmers to a longer period, such as 30 years, so that Singaporeans would be more willing to go into farming," he suggests.

Comcrop's lease is for six years while G.R.E.E.N.S' lease is for five years.

Still, industry players are optimistic that more people will want to venture into the commercial urban farming scene.

Mr Allan Lim, 42, who founded Comcrop with three others, says more technologies are now available to boost the efficiency of producing vegetables.

Comcrop uses an automated proprietary system which "doubles the capacity and halves the labour".

This helps keep the cost of its herbs competitive. The aquaponics farm cost the founders the "upper end of a six-figure sum" and they expect to break even by the middle of this year.

A growing demand for local produce is also a positive sign.

For instance, Comcrop has seen the demand for its herbs grow by 20 per cent every month since last April.

It is in talks with an industrial land- owner to build another rooftop farm 10 times bigger than its current one, at a food hub in Woodlands.

He says: "Consumers are seeing the value of eating locally produced food which tends to be fresher and hence tastes better."

He pegs the price of the basil and mint Comcrop produces to wholesale prices. So if the wholesale price of 1kg of basil is $40 that week, he would sell his at the same price.

El Mero Mero, a Mexican restaurant in Victoria Street, gets almost all its supply of mint and habanero chilli - about 500g each week - from Comcrop.

But there have been some weeks when Comcrop could not meet the demand due to factors such as bad weather.

Executive chef Remy Lefebvre, 37, says this is to be expected as Comcrop is just one production house. If there are more farms like it, supply would be more stable, he notes.

He says: "We prefer to buy local because the produce is fresher and has a stronger flavour. The price is also competitive."

Herb garden in HDB corridor

Personal fitness trainer Balan Gopal gets a kick out of turning trash into something useful.

Among other things, the 43-year-old father of two has made a lamp out of an empty 2-litre milk bottle and turned a netting he collected from a construction site into a bag that holds his gym shoes while allowing them to be aired.

So when he saw last year that coffee shops were throwing away used coffee grounds, he lugged bags of them back to his three-room Housing Board flat in Balestier, to the horror of his wife, Madam Chan Lan Foong, 43.

She is a vice-president in a bank and the couple have two sons, aged 11 and eight.

He researched online and read that coffee grounds can be used as a base for growing oyster mushrooms, one of his favourite foods. One thing led to another and, within a few months, he found himself growing other vegetables and herbs.

Today, there are herbs such as basil and mint growing in 15 recycled soft drink bottles that he has secured to the railing outside his flat.

There are also herbs sprouting from about 150 small transparent plastic cups at the railing outside his in-laws' place two doors away.

There, he also grows oyster mushrooms in 12 soft drink bottles as well as vegetables such as bak choy and kangkong in a styrofoam box.

He harvests the plants about two to three times a month and his mother- in-law, who cooks for his family, uses them in her dishes. He gives any excess to his appreciative neighbours and also uses the various herbs to brew tea for his family.

"It's so nice to eat what you grow. They taste fresher and sweeter than the ones you buy," he says.

He now has more than 20 types of edibles and hopes to grow more varieties of food with different harvesting times so that they can eventually supply most of his family's meals.

It is not an expensive hobby, says Mr Gopal, who reckons that he has spent about $300 so far, mainly on plants and seeds.

He relies heavily on recycled materials. Besides coffee grounds, he also collects fruit peels from a fruitseller in a nearby hawker centre.

Sometimes, he even lifts the covers of rubbish bins and scans them for plastic bottles and bags of decomposed vegetables.

Back home, he washes the bottles and uses them to hold his plants. He feeds the fruit and vegetables to earthworms, hundreds of which are housed in two big containers outside his flat. He then uses their castings, or manure, to fertilise his plants.

But it took some trial and error before he got things right.

"So many plants died in the first couple of months, I lost count," he recalls.

Other mistakes he made in the early days include leaving the coffee grounds outside for more than a month and adding fish guts that had not fully decomposed to fertilise his plants.

Both gave off a stench that, according to his wife and children, rivalled that from a rubbish truck.

Madam Chan says she thought initially that her husband was going through a mid-life crisis.

But she has since come to appreciate that his "crazy ideas" do work.

Mr Gopal, who will start an online business (www.herbinacup.com) next month selling eco-friendly products he created, says he is passionate about growing his own food because he wants to challenge himself. He says: "I wanted to show people that it's possible to grow your own food in built-up areas like HDB flats."

He also wants to teach his children the basics of growing food and that "food does not grow in supermarkets".

His sons now help him harvest, prune and propagate his plants. Troy, his older boy, says: "I want to grow my own food too when I grow up, so that I don't have to waste money buying it."

Edible landscape

As a child, Mr Alexius Yeo helped his mother tend to her pots of flowers. Later, as a streetscape manager at the National Parks Board, he helped maintain roadside greenery.

But it never occurred to him to grow edible plants until he went to the Philippines in October 2012 to volunteer with the non-governmental group Gawad Kalinga for eight months. Based in the Philippines, the group aims to reduce poverty and has built thousands of villages in the country.

The 29-year-old recalls: "I was assigned to a farm to do landscaping. There were not many ornamental plants around, so I found myself landscaping food plants such as lemongrass and sweet potatoes."

The experience made him realise the value of growing plants that are "not only good to look at, but also edible".

"When we grow something as basic as our own food and are sustained by it, we find a personal connection to the place they grow in," he says.

He sees building beautiful edible landscapes as one way Singaporeans can develop a deeper connection with their land and the people they share it with.

When he returned to Singapore in June 2013, he joined Edible Garden City as an urban farmer. The social enterprise designs, builds and maintains edible landscapes.

In June last year, he asked his parents, with whom he lives, if he could turn the lawn in their Serangoon North corner terrace house into an edible garden. The patch is about one third the size of a basketball court.

The bachelor says: "Since I was helping people create edible landscape, I thought I should also do my own."

With his parents' approval, Mr Yeo, who was then working part-time with Edible Garden City, started to prepare the soil. That was the "most physically tiring part", which took him three afternoons every week for four months. It involved digging out the grass, creating raised vegetable beds and manually mixing the compost into the beds.

Once he got that part done, he began planting the seeds and bringing in the plants. All in, he spent about $600, largely on soil and plants.

He makes his own chemical-free pesticide by crushing together neem leaf, chilli and garlic and soaking them in water. He also creates fertilisers from leftover vegetables and coffee grounds.

Today, his plot is thriving and contains 10 kinds of local vegetables and 15 types of herbs.

He says: "I wanted to grow local vegetables because they are better adapted to the climate here and are hence easier to grow. I am also excited to bring back vegetables that used to be popular among Singaporeans, such as mugwort and mani cai."

He also grows speciality herbs such as chocolate mint and cinnamon basil, which are not readily available in supermarkets.

Mr Yeo, who now runs Carbon Inq, a nature-based experiential learning programme for schools, spends less time on his garden these days, but he still harvests the plants three times a week. His parents, both retirees, and his brother, 32, a computer animator, help him occasionally.

His mum, Mrs Isabel Yeo, 67, the main cook in the family, says: "I like that I can just go out to the garden to pluck what I need for my cooking. The plants are very fresh and fragrant. I never teared when I cut spring onions in the past, but I do when I cut those I pluck from the garden."

To encourage his neighbours to start their own edible gardens, Mr Yeo opened up his garden to them last month.

About 25 people turned up, some from as far as Jurong, after learning about it through word of mouth. Mr Yeo also slipped pamphlets about the event into the mailboxes of his neighbours' houses.

Over two hours, the group had a hands-on session in the garden followed by a potluck gathering where they got to know one another.

Mr Yeo says: "It was heartening to see people of all ages and from all professions. There's definitely an interest here in growing your own food, but people often do not know where or how to start."

To provide some answers to these questions, he plans to run free workshops at his place every month. Besides giving tips to his neighbours on how to grow edibles and cook them, he will also invite them to get their hands dirty in his garden.

He says: "It's my way of connecting with my neighbours through doing something meaningful together. When you grow your own food, you will come to better appreciate how much time and effort go behind its production."

Breastfeeding mums wanted to eat well

When Ms Chuah Khai Lin and Ms Evelyn Toh started breastfeeding their babies five years ago, they became more conscious of what they were eating.

Says Ms Toh, 38, whose daughter, an only child, is now five: "We wanted to eat food that was nutritious and free of chemicals so that we wouldn't pass anything harmful to our kids."

They have known each other since they were mass communication students at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and became interested in where their food came from and how to grow them.

But the two, who live in HDB flats, did not know where to start.

Says Ms Toh: "I thought you could grow vegetables only if you have enough land."

Then last year, while pitching for a branding project for Bugis Cube, Ms Chuah, 38, who was then working as a freelance art director, and Ms Toh, who was running her own branding and design consultancy, learnt that a 5,800 sq ft space on the rooftop of the shopping mall was available for rent.

Coincidentally, at around the same time, they met Mr James Lam, who founded UGrowGardens in 2013.

The consultancy helps people build and maintain food gardens. Mr Lam, 55, has developed several systems of growing high volumes of vegetables in limited space in the backyard of his parents' house and was looking for a bigger plot to display them.

The three decided to work together.

Says Ms Chuah: "It would be a symbiotic relationship. Evelyn and I would pay the rent and get to do a lot of hands-on learning while UGrowGardens could use our space to upgrade existing vertical growing systems and also test prototypes of new systems which we will also help develop."

The women decided that their main sources of revenue would come from developing starter kits and running workshops on how to grow edibles.

Says Ms Chuah: "We felt there would be a demand because people are more concerned about eating healthily these days, and growing your own food is a way to do so because you won't be adding chemicals to what you grow."

So even though the two were nervous about the viability of their business, they signed on the dotted line last August, got the space on a five-year lease and started their company, G.R.E.E.N.S. (short for Grow, Reap, Eat, Educate, Nurture and Share).

They invested about $8,000 to $10,000 in all on growing supplies such as fertilisers, seeds and peat, and depended on recycled materials such as pots and trays to hold their plants. They decline to reveal their monthly rental, but industry sources put it at a four-figure sum.

Their husbands have been supportive, turning up on weekends to help them. Ms Chuah's husband, a former loyalty marketing director, is in between jobs while Ms Toh's husband is an IT manager.

It has been a lot of hard physical work, say the women.

When they are not out on the rooftop in their hats, they would be out visiting farms with Mr Lam at places such as Kranji and Lim Chu Kang to learn from other farmers.

The most challenging part so far has been dealing with the heat and wind on the rooftop. Says Ms Chuah: "The plants need to be watered every few hours. It is very tiring."

It is not uncommon for up to 40 per cent of seedlings to die due to the heat and wind. They are in the midst of installing an irrigation system for the plants and building a nursery for their seedlings.

When their plants do not do well, they would take them home to nurse them back to health. They now have their own herbs growing along the corridor outside their flats or hung in pots on window grilles. By October last year, they had learnt enough to give talks and run workshops. The following month, they had developed their own starter kits for growing herbs, vegetables and microgreens.

So far, they have held five workshops, each attended by about 10 to 15 people who paid $25 to $30 each. They have also sold more than 300 starter kits, which cost between $10 and $20 and can be bought online at greens.sg.

The kits contain all you need to start growing edibles such as lemon basil and arugula, and includes seeds, soil and pot.

Says Ms Chuah: "We keep our prices affordable because we believe that healthy eating should not be only for the rich."

Although they are still in the red, they say it has been a fulfilling journey. Plus, they no longer buy herbs such as basil and coriander, but use what they grow instead. Ms Toh also grows spinach and chye sim.

Says Ms Chuah: "We are definitely making a ripple. When someone tells us that he has used our starter kits to grow and harvest his plants, we feel satisfaction."

They also plan to sell the vegetables they harvest from their rooftop garden. They now specialise in microgreens and herbs such as chocolate mint and cinnamon basil, which are not widely sold here, and sell them to eateries nearby.

Although the women, who are in this full-time, have given themselves a year to break even, they will persist even if they do not.

Says Ms Chuah, who has two sons aged five and three: "We believe in what we are doing. We have no backup plans."