Is Singapore’s ‘30 by 30’ Food Security Goal Too Far-fetched?
Singapore has a penchant for ambitious targets. While laudable, it has fallen short at times. In football, it set a goal of qualifying for the World Cup by 2010. That target was revised to 2034.
In the food industry, the city-state announced a 30 by 30 plan in 2019 that sets out to locally produce 30% of the city-state’s nutritional needs by 2030. The target, however, may prove too ambitious if more isn’t done to hit it.
Despite making strides, some agritech investors and players tell Tech in Asia that the 30 by 30 goal remains more of an aspirational target than an achievable one.
“Singapore knows that it’s not going to be producing beef at scale, ever,” says Jonathon Quigley, partner at New South Wales-based agritech VC firm Cultiv8.
“I think it’s a stretch – I don’t think we’re able to meet it in terms of the trajectory we’re on right now,” adds Ray Poh, founder and managing director of hydroponics farm Artisan Green.
In land-scarce Singapore, alternative protein startups and novel farming methods take up a sizable share of VC funding to agritech firms. But not all investors are convinced that they are the way to go.
Quigley says that he understands why some investors are backing cellular agriculture “from a frontier investment perspective.” However, he points out that the sector is “just not of interest to us.”
In Singapore, Cultiv8 invested in Hydroleap, which has devised a way to treat industrial wastewater – including those from dairy and food processing plants – using less energy than traditional methods.
We struggle with cellular agriculture due to cost.
– Jonathan Quigley, partner at Cultiv8
Local food production hasn’t quite moved the needle, although disruptive technology could lead to dramatic improvements in the future.
As of the fourth quarter of last year, local production of hen shell eggs, seafood, and vegetables as a percentage of total consumption remain comparable to 2020’s numbers, according to a report from the Singapore Food Agency.
They also make up just 28.8%, 7.3%, and 3.3% of total consumption in the country, respectively. The 2022 report doesn’t mention the contribution of locally farmed land animals.
Why scaling cellular agriculture is difficult
A promising answer lies in alternative proteins, which have quickly become the poster child of Singapore’s 30 by 30 goal.
Cellular agriculture, for instance, can broaden the range of protein options available to customers and lower the risk of import disruptions, therefore improving food security – if produced at scale.
And, despite efforts to court cell-based meat producers into Singapore, they haven’t scaled meaningfully.
“We struggle with cellular agriculture due to cost – where you use the technology to produce lower-value and commodity-based products like beef mince. We think this will be difficult,” Quigley explains.
To be fair, firms focused on plant-based proteins have raised a far larger amount of VC investments compared to their cell-based counterparts. Contributing to this could be their products’ comparatively more palatable prices.
Their ability to scale globally from a home base in Singapore also make them attractive funding targets.
Growthwell Foods and Tindle Foods, for instance, have both begun expanding their operations to markets like Germany and the UK, where customers are more receptive and willing to pay a premium for plant-based products.
But alternative protein firms, plant-based or not, face similar challenges: high costs and a perception of poorer taste and quality.
The Case For Cultivated Meat
Despite this, firms like Umami Bioworks believe that seafood and meat primarily made by cell cultivation is “possible in a few decades,” its founder and CEO Mihir Pershad says.
The Singapore-based firm focuses on cultivating fish meat, particularly endangered species like unagi (Japanese eel).
Compared to fish, pork, or poultry, endangered species that are unsuited to commercial farming, like the varieties Umami Bioworks focuses on, will have an “easier” path to price parity due to these products being more expensive and scarce, he notes.
Pershad adds that the company expects to bring its products to market at “near-parity within two years.”
Cultiv8’s Quigley says he sees more potential in technology used for “high-value output.” He shares that the VC firm is looking for startups that can improve animal and plant health, increase farm productivity through automation and robotics, or reduce a producer’s climate footprint.
Cultiv8 is seeking to raise A$100 million (US$63 million) in the next six months for a fund that will focus on agritech and foodtech firms in the seed to series B stages, targeting a first close in December.
Some cultivated meat players Tech in Asia spoke to acknowledge that the nascency of their sector may not align with some investors, underscoring the need to search for patient capital.
The timeline for scaling cultivated technologies is “a little stretched out because of how nascent it is and inherent challenges in transforming [technologies designed] for biotech and for pharma into food,” says Elwin Tan, co-founder of Singapore-based cultivated protein firm Meatiply.
“Different VC firms and investors have different limitations that narrow their focus based on their thesis and mandates,” he adds. “We do tend to have to look for more purpose-driven, impact-driven investors with a long-enough fund life.”
Uncertain Environmental Impact
Alt-protein manufacturers have long argued that their methods, whether those that use plant-based proteins or live animal cells, are superior to traditional farming methods in that they don’t harm animals.
They also claim to be better for the environment. Dutch foodtech firm Meatable, which plans to debut a cultivated pork product in Singapore next year, says its method of cultivating pork is 30x faster than rearing a pig and is fundamentally more efficient.
At scale, “you reduce the environmental footprint by around 90% compared to conventional meat [production],” Meatable COO Hans Huistra said at a media tasting in September.
For things like land and water use – it is indisputable that cultivated tech will be a lot more efficient.
– Elwin Tan, co-founder of Meatiply
The net impact on the environment, however, is unclear. A preprint study by researchers from the University of California, Davis found that cultivated meat manufacturing produces 4x to 25x more carbon dioxide than conventional meat production.
Pershad of Umami Bioworks, however, calls out the above study for making critical assumptions that don’t reflect current industry practices. For one, it assumes that “highest-purity, pharma-grade ingredients must be used in culture media,” he notes. Put simply, culture media is the nutrient broth that helps cells multiply.
His firm, Pershad says, and many other companies “are already working with food-grade media that is significantly cheaper and less carbon intensive to produce.”
Other studies have also found that cultivated meat production would have a “positive impact on the environment” as long as renewable energy is used, he says.
“For things like land and water use, it is indisputable that cultivated [tech] will be a lot more efficient,” he adds.
Limits to Vertical Farming
In Singapore, multi-million government grants aimed at kickstarting local food production have drawn in farms that are testing novel methods.
Vertical farming is promising, but it tends to produce a small range of crops that are often limited to leafy greens, micro herbs, and small berries. These “play around the edges of total calorie needs,” Quigley points out.
“Indoor farms can produce more types of vegetables, but that is influenced by electricity and labor costs,” Artisan Green’s Poh says.
“That’s the reason why we are limited to growing higher-value crops and leafy greens – because the crop turns are a lot quicker,” he explains. Crop turns refer to the time taken for each harvest.
For now, Artisan Green focuses on spinach, lettuce, and herbs like dill and basil. It’s also experimenting with new crops like arugula. The price of its produce is pegged around that of organic imported vegetables, Poh shares.
The founder acknowledges that vertical farming isn’t meant to replace traditional, outdoor farming. “It’s here to go hand-in-hand,” he adds.
In the meantime, Poh is expanding his venture steadily.
This is an important problem and we should leave no stone unturned.
– Elwin Tan, co-founder of Meatiply
He’s deploying smart lighting tech that can automate and adjust the intensity of light throughout the day and, consequently, the cost needed to power and cool down its plant systems.
The firm has put in a tender for a two-hectare farm integrating these technologies, which will improve crop quality and yield.
By end-2025, the new farm is expected to produce 25 tonnes of greens per month – the amount needed to feed 3,000 people.
Egg-cellent Results
Despite the challenges hindering Singapore’s 30 by 30 goal, the existence of the goal could accelerate solutions for the city-state’s food security problem.
“The question is less about how far away we are from ‘30 by 30’ but how much we have done with the resources we’ve already put in,” Meatiply’s Tan says. “If we didn’t have this goal, if we didn’t draw a line in the sand, we wouldn’t even have started.”
Cultivated or plant-based, all technologies are valuable, Tan adds. “We need all of them. We need precision fermentation, we need biomass fermentation, we need plant-based, cultivated, mycelium … This is an important problem and we should leave no stone unturned.”
So far, there have been some successes. As of 2022, some 30% of eggs consumed in the city-state come from local farmers. That figure is expected to grow to about half when a fourth egg farm becomes fully operational in 2024.
But Singapore’s small landmass and even smaller pockets of land allocated to build new farms – just 1% in 2021 – serve as a natural limit to how much farms can grow, reap economies of scale, and offer prices attractive to the end-consumer.
There’s a different path to achieving food security. Instead of pouring its attention into areas such as alternative proteins or vertical farming, which are both costly and unproven, Singapore should play to its natural strengths – one of them being its high connectivity to trading partners.
“I see an opportunity for Singapore to be that regional transshipment hub, not just for energy and goods but also for perishables,” Quigley notes.
To build stronger and closer ties with existing trading partners such as Australia and the US around its food needs makes “a lot of sense,” he adds. The Australia-Singapore food pact, for instance, could serve to increase the trade of high-quality and reliable food products between both countries.
“There’s no harm in shooting for the stars … but preparation for target shortfalls are essential,” says Quigley.
Currency converted from Australian dollar to US dollar: US$1 = A$1.55.
BY MELISSA GOH
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