Can Singapore’s farming future grow in Malaysia’s US$123 million agriculture hub?
The city state’s farmers eye the Johor-Singapore SEZ for cheaper land and labour to boost food security amid high local costs
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city state with high prices and little vacant land.
Wei is confident of securing farmers for the 80-hectare (200-acre) site, promising they can “reduce their cost of set-up and operations” there. Representing a joint venture between his agritech firm Archisen and Southern Catalyst backed by Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance, he aims to get them going by the third quarter of this year, offering 25-year land leases bundled with infrastructure and electricity.
“It’s an aggressive timeline,” Wei admitted, as earth diggers roamed the plot clearing it of palm trees. But wait any longer and some of those ventures may already be out of business, he said.
Singapore, a country smaller than New York City, has tried in recent years to reinvigorate its farming industry, which over decades has been crowded out by skyscrapers and housing blocks. Just this month, it opened the world’s tallest vertical farm valued at S$80 million (US$62 million) and set to produce up to 2,000 tonnes of vegetables like lettuce and spinach a year.
Yet, a string of farm and start-up closures has underlined how hi-tech agriculture is far from being a definitive solution for the island state’s food security.