‘A growing interest’: Despite challenges in beating the heat, unique crops like ice plants, strawberries take root in S’pore farms
- Singapore farmers are growing niche greens such as ice plants, strawberries and baby spinach, despite the challenge of growing them in a tropical climate
- To beat the heat, they turn to indoor farming under artificial lights and air-conditioned environments
- Some also resort to genetically modifying produce to thrive in the local climate
- The trend comes amid the Singapore Food Agency’s push towards the “30 by 30” goal, a target for the agri-food industry here to sustainably produce 30 per cent of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030
SINGAPORE — Originating from the cooler coastal regions of South Africa, crystalline ice plants have in recent years appeared in the daily greens of salad lovers with their distinctive crunchy texture and frosty appearance.
But instead of being imported from Cape Town, the crop is more likely to have been harvested from a hydroponics farm in Sembawang, which has been growing these vegetables since 2018.
This is despite the fact that growing these plants in Singapore’s warm and humid climate is a “difficult” task, said Ms Judy Low, who founded the farm Vegtical Green. It takes three months to grow them in water trays indoors, with air-conditioners and artificial lights in place of sunlight.
“Our success rate is not very high. If anything happens within these three months, the ice plant will collapse and we are not able to continue production anymore,” Ms Low, 44, said. In comparison, lettuce takes two to three weeks to reach its harvest stage.
In recent years, other farms have also been choosing hard-to-grow fruits, vegetables and herbs such as strawberries, thyme and baby spinach in place of crops that are more suited for Singapore’s tropical climate, harnessing the use of technology to beat the heat.
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The trend comes amid the Singapore Food Agency’s (SFA) push towards the “30 by 30” goal, a food security target for the agri-food industry here to sustainably produce 30 per cent of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030.
Speaking to TODAY, farm owners said that while leafy greens remain the crop of choice, the need to differentiate their products from other farms was the chief reason a variety of locally grown options can now be found on supermarket shelves, including those that previously had to be imported from beyond Asia.
The fact that these were difficult to grow in Singapore meant that farms which could pull it off tended to be the pioneers, they said.
For example, ice plants — also known as delosperma — has their fair share of fans here, with some customers who place orders with the farm directly having to wait for three months to receive them, said Ms Low.
Far from being a niche crop, they are being sold in Singapore’s supermarkets like Sheng Siong. To date, at least three other farms have begun to grow ice plants, too.
Said Ms Low: “When we started, I don’t think there was anyone growing this particular crop. There are people importing it from Malaysia, but Malaysia uses soil-grown ice plants from Cameron Highlands so they are quite different in terms of their texture and taste.
While ice plants cannot beat other leafy greens in terms of sales figures, customers who know about them are willing to pay a premium — S$9.90 for a 100g — because of their novelty factor.
“Those who (know about the ice plant) will appreciate the price of it because it’s rare and it’s not easy to grow. It takes three months to harvest it compared to lettuce which (takes) two to three weeks,” Ms Low said.
STRAWBERRIES AND BABY SPINACH
Artisan Green founder Mr Ray Poh, 37, said he decided to grow baby spinach as his key crop when he started out in 2018 after studying the market and realising that there was a gap that can be filled.
“Everyone was growing things like lettuce, kale and microgreens, and these were very easy crops to grow. We wanted to have a bit of a differentiator so we chose baby spinach because people are widely accepting of baby spinach,” he said.
“For kale, you still have to convince people of its taste and the nutritional benefits. If you talk about baby spinach, everyone knows about it.”
That also means that locally grown baby spinach can be fresher than those imported from overseas, due to the shorter supply chain involved, Mr Poh added.
“Typically, baby spinach imported from overseas lasts for about three to five days after you buy it from the supermarkets, but we’ve tested our produce before and it lasts for three to five weeks,” he said.
While baby spinach is Artisan Green’s main crop, the farm has also expanded its product range to include other commercial crops such as lettuce, bak choi and kale.
“We will play a part in contributing to the self-sufficiency of Singapore as we are targeting to grow 25,000kg per month in our new farm (by 2025),” Mr Poh said.
“Our crop range will be even more diverse as we are rolling out a range of 30 different crops,” he said, adding that it includes other crops such as thyme and dandelion.
Nevertheless, the economic realities of growing such crops in Singapore still apply as farm owners need to factor in the increased running costs involved to operate artificial lights and control the temperature and humidity.
For Singapore strawberry farm Singrow, the solution lies in the crop itself.
Dr Bao Shengjie, the CEO and chief scientist of Singrow, said strawberries typically need cooler temperatures of 5°C to 15°C to thrive. But through several years of research and development, Singrow developed genetically edited strawberries that are capable of growing in tropical climates, on top of other advantages such as being sweeter and more resistant to diseases.
His strawberries can thrive between 20°C and 28°C, and was developed using advanced genomics technology that was made possible by the research and development equipment provided by the National University of Singapore.
Dr Bao, 34, said he first noticed the stark difference between the sour taste of strawberries he had in Singapore and the ones he had when he was living in China, which spurred him on to overcome the challenges of growing strawberries here.
After all, imported strawberries are harvested prematurely in order to accommodate the long shipping time they take to arrive in Singapore, which makes strawberries less sweet, he added.
With the same technology, Singrow has turned its attention to producing new crop varieties, such as rice, sustainable palm oil and other staples that form a huge part of people’s everyday diet.
“Our proprietary genomics technology platform has created the world’s first climate-resilient strawberry variety,” Dr Bao said.
“This is a gamechanger in our current-day global efforts in managing food insecurity and malnutrition issues.”
Not all farms are choosing to commercialise their unique crops, however, as ultimately, they must be regarded as a viable food option and not just a novelty.
Some, like rooftop farm operator ComCrop, have experimented with growing crops such as purple sorrel, which is eaten in salads.
But the crop is not for sale and is only grown in small volumes. ComCrop’s CEO Peter Barber, 52, told TODAY that it started as a prototype in the farm’s early days and believes there is not much economic benefit to them, even though some restaurants were willing to pay for them before the pandemic.
Now, the farm is focusing its attention on growing a larger volume of vegetables to meet Singapore’s food security goals, instead of niche produce like purple sorrel.
“When the 30 by 30 initiative was announced, our mandate was to dramatically increase the volume of leafy greens that we were growing for the Singapore community,” said Mr Barber. “Our focus was very much pushed by the necessity to be growing food and not cute little things.”
But he is not ruling out the return of purple sorrel to his commercial output.
“Maybe we might do some more of these type of things in the future. But right now, the focus is very much on food security and volume of food,” he said.
TODAY has reached out to SFA for comment.
BY SAKINAH ARIF LIM
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/growing-interest-despite-challenges-beating-heat-unique-crops-ice-plants-strawberries-take-root-spore-farms-2186771