A handful of Singapore companies are on a journey of #innovation to do just that. Growing cold weather crops like strawberries and kale on our sunny island? A challenge but not a problem for local urban farmer Sustenir Agriculture.

For Mr Benjamin Swan, the first seeds were sown where he began thinking about Singapore’s land scarcity: how can you maximise our nation’s existing farming space?

There was only one direction he could go: Up.

And so he began designing a vertical indoor farm for the future, one that has since materialised into a 930 sq m commercial farm in Admiralty producing 54 tonnes of seasonal crops – all year round.

Racks of tightly packed plants absorb light from colourful LEDs, and are grown at low temperatures ranging from 14 to 22ºC. Today, Sustenir specialises in growing a variety of high-value imported produce, including two types of kale, arugula and lettuce.

Their kale, which is harvested daily, is sold at all Cold Storage Singapore outlets and on online grocery platform RedMart. They also supply vegetables to food outlets such as Cedele, SaladStop!, and restaurants under TungLok Group.

But Mr Swan had bigger ambitions.

In October 2019, Sustenir became the first Singapore indoor agriculture player to #goglobal. It launched a 4,600 sq m farm in Hong Kong’s Tuen Mun district, equipped with LED lighting and climate-control systems.

With Enterprise Singapore's support, Sustenir will soon be expanding their Admiralty farm to 4,000 sq m and adopting robotic solutions to support seeding and transplanting. This will help to increase its yearly production of vegetables by four times.

For these vertical farmers, the sky is truly the limit when it comes to producing Singapore’s food for the future. #SGUnited